


An Art and a Fortunate Accident

by grapehyasynth



Category: Schitt's Creek
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Captain Correlli's Mandolin, Dan Levy said the timeline doesn't matter, Fluff, Inspired by Black Mirror, Lots of life advice I do not myself listen to, M/M, Mutual Pining, Notions of identity, POV Patrick Brewer, Prodigious hand-waving about how virtual reality would actually work, Requited Love, Smut, Strangers to Lovers, They never said they were bright you guys just really fucking pretty, Unrequited Love, Virtual Reality, colleagues to friends to lovers, references to, self exploration, shameless flirting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-18
Updated: 2020-10-30
Packaged: 2021-03-08 22:20:58
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 28,450
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27084022
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/grapehyasynth/pseuds/grapehyasynth
Summary: Struggling to get over his crush on his business partner, Patrick strikes up a sexual relationship with a stranger in a virtual reality video game. It clarifies a lot of things for him - and makes everything more complicated.Think "You've Got Mail" but with more advanced technology and no enmity.
Relationships: Patrick Brewer/David Rose
Comments: 413
Kudos: 407





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> *David wriggle* it's HERE! 
> 
> I have had this idea for the better part of a year and have been working on it for about two months, so I genuinely no longer have a concept of if it's even ANYTHING, but I DID IT. Whatever the outcome, I was more organized and intentional about writing and editing this fic than maybe any fic I've written before, and that felt like a huge deal. But y'all I am tired and so glad to be done and to not write for a while hahahaha. Seriously y'all why did we choose this hobby it's the worst. It's the best. But it's the worst. 
> 
> This was inspired by the episode of Black Mirror called "Striking Vipers" but it is really almost nothing like that episode. I originally tried to pawn this idea off on other writers because I'm not confident in writing smut but here we are. Of course it ended up being much more emotional and introspective and less smutty than I thought it would but still has plenty of smut to make me laugh and cringe
> 
> Hugh-ge (HA - she'll get the joke) shoutout to Sarah for being a beta wench extraordinaire. Not only did she provide vital feedback, great ideas, and general support, she talked me through actual breakdowns. A queen. 
> 
> This fic is completed, including editing, and I hope to post every other day.

_ Love is a temporary madness. It erupts like an earthquake and then subsides. And when it subsides you have to make a decision. You have to work out whether your roots have become so entwined together that it is inconceivable that you should ever part. Because this is what love is. Love is not breathlessness, it is not excitement, it is not the promulgation of promises of eternal passion. That is just being "in love" which any of us can convince ourselves we are. Love itself is what is left over when being in love has burned away, and this is both an art and a fortunate accident. Your mother and I had it, we had roots that grew towards each other underground, and when all the pretty blossoms had fallen from our branches we found that we were one tree and not two. - Captain Correlli’s Mandolin _

“Okay, that is the  _ third _ mistake you’ve made in the last half hour. Is your robot programming finally breaking down?” David demands. 

Patrick’s cheeks heat pleasantly; he hadn’t realized David was standing so close behind him. “I caught all three before I entered them in the spreadsheet,” he defends himself, tucking his elbows close to his sides as David leans past him to frown at the screen. “Though I’m impressed you even noticed they were mistakes.” 

“Ex _ cuse _ you,” David huffs, planting both hands on his hips in that indignant way Patrick really, really likes. “Just because I can’t do any of that -- formula stuff myself doesn’t mean I don’t know when it’s  _ wrong _ .” 

“Oh, okay,” Patrick nods, because David’s still standing so close that Patrick can smell his cologne and it makes him want to do stupid things. “So you’ll start to accept my creative input, because while I don’t have an artistic bone in my body I can tell when it’s wrong? For example, if I were to say the layout of the store is giving me weird vibes and we should change it--?” 

“ _ No _ .” David, clearly horrified and amused, shakes his head rapidly. “There’s  _ such _ a big difference between those situations, Patrick, you have no idea.” 

“Uh-huh.” Patrick just grins to himself, biting his lip as he looks back at the computer screen. “Huge difference.” 

“Besides,” David says loftily, “I’m sure you have, like,  _ an _ artistic bone in your body, somewhere. Despite your personal aesthetic choices suggesting otherwise.” 

“How magnanimous of you.” Patrick wants to lean into this  _ bone in your body _ theme, give this conversation the sharp, slightly dirty twist that always seems to make David stand up a bit taller, makes him press his lips together so tightly they go a little white, but. Not today. He shuts the computer. “I’ll bring you a finger painting tomorrow for your consideration.” 

“You’re leaving?” David frowns. “It’s 6:02, Patrick.” 

“That’s correct.” He claps David on the shoulder as he passes him. “You can close up, right? Considering I’ve done it, oh, the last five days this week.” 

“Where are you- what are you-” David rolls his eyes as if to reset his brain and tries again. “I’ve literally never seen you this eager to get out of here. It’s like Alexis when Jesse Metcalfe accidentally changed his Facebook status to  _ single _ . Do you have a hot date, or something?” 

“Uh, no,” Patrick chuckles, wishing he  _ did _ have a hot date, just to see how David’s eyebrows would feel about it. “There’s this new game out today,  _ Striking Vipers _ . I mean, the game’s not new, but the previous versions were way out of my price range. They’ve added a virtual reality component which is supposed to be totally cutting edge, really changing gameplay-”

“Ew, oh my god, you’re such a boy,” David interrupts, miming vomiting on the bottles of toner. “You’ve been itchy all day over a  _ video game _ ?”

“I  _ am _ a boy, David, thank you for finally noticing,” Patrick grins. “Yeah, I haven’t been this amped for a release since college. Everything I’ve read says that the sensory integration is unreal.” 

David covers his mouth like he’s going to be sick, but there’s something about his eyes and his just-hidden smile that convinces Patrick, in the part of him that just  _ knows _ David, that David is actually amused. “ _ Amped?  _ Is this what you sound like when you talk to your  _ bros _ ?” 

“Aw yeah.” Patrick widens his stance, puffing his chest a bit. “You know. We get amped for releases and then we chug some brewskis and smash those buttons.” 

“Oh my  _ god _ .” Even David’s full-body wriggle can’t hide how endeared he is. Patrick hopes it’s endearment, anyway; he’d just about give up his business degree for David Rose to find him endearing. Except without his business degree he might never have met David, so. “This store is a welcoming space for all, Patrick, but I don’t know if I can handle you like this.” 

Patrick drops the act, crossing his arms to clutch his leather portfolio to his chest. “We should play together sometime. Stevie told me how much you like game nights.” 

“Okay, very different kind of games and you know it,” David says, threatening Patrick with the least threatening finger jab in finger history. 

Patrick ducks his head, laughing. He loves getting David fiery like this, but there’s always a point when he can’t sustain it, when he wants to just be genuine with him. “I know, I know. I know you a little better than that. You’d hate  _ this  _ game, anyway, I’m sure. It used to be all about hand-to-hand combat-”

“Oh, so it’s a  _ fighting _ game,” David nods, with that look of affectionate, superior judgment he’s perfected and patented. 

“It  _ used to be _ ,” Patrick insists. “They’ve really expanded it, broadened the appeal. There’s an adventure mode, with a story and everything-” 

“Well, I’m sure I would still hate it. Too many buttons and -  _ joystaffs _ for me, thanks so much.” 

“Joy _ sticks _ ,” Patrick corrects him gently. 

“Mhm. Words made up by a bunch of  _ bros _ .” 

Patrick could talk to David all night - does, quite often, even after spending all day working with him - but he really is excited for this game, which was delivered to his apartment earlier that day. He pauses with his hand on the doorknob. “Gaming is very inclusive these days, David. We’d love to have you.” 

“Mmkay, sounds like a cult! Good night, Patrick!” David calls, already headed off to get the broom to sweep up, or so Patrick hopes, anyway. 

Patrick walks home at what is only a slightly brisker pace than normal, grinning up at the stars like the dork he knows he is, fluency in frat-talk notwithstanding. He’s 33 and he’s racing home to unbox the hottest new game like he’s 15 again. He’d almost think nothing had changed, if it weren’t for his big fat crush on his business partner, who happens to be a man, which is definitely not what 15-year-old Patrick had been into, or had realized he was into.

He had tried, in the weeks after his disaster of an attempt at asking David out on his birthday, to get over his crush. What sent a clearer message than bringing your best friend slash ex to dinner? Fortunately Patrick had slipped the present under the table before Stevie had seen it; lord knows what kind of public humiliation he would’ve experienced otherwise. He’d like to not lose two good friends and have to leave another town in shame, thanks. 

So yeah. Message received, unfortunately. He’s still harboring this little pathetic hope that David just needs time to fall in love with him, which is the kind of delusional thinking that turns every third straight man into a borderline stalker, so he mostly keeps it tamped down. He’ll flirt with David like hell, but only because David does it first. It’s just their dynamic. It doesn’t  _ mean _ anything, however much he wishes it did. 

Yes, he sometimes still wonders if there’s more there - like, does David stand as close to other people as he sometimes does to Patrick, like he did tonight? Patrick’s always gotten the impression that David is someone with a clearly defined sense of personal space, someone who’s comfortable expressing that boundary. And yet the longer they work together, the more it feels like David gravitates towards him, like the space between them diminishes. He doesn’t think David’s even like that with Stevie or Alexis; maybe it’s because he’s a guy? David’s pretty openly scornful of most conventional notions of gender, but Patrick knows these things are complicated. David doesn’t really have male friends against whom to compare; Ted and Ray fall firmly into the  _ people David is forced to interact with  _ category. 

Maybe, he muses morosely as he takes the stairs up to his apartment two at a time, it’s just because David is so unthreatened by Patrick, sees him in such a profoundly nonsexual light, that he doesn’t mind being close to him. 

“Clearly over  _ that _ crush,” he remarks sarcastically to the cardboard box of precious cargo waiting outside his door. 

The game’s console - a milky white button of plastic about the size of a quarter that connects the player’s mind wirelessly to the game - has to charge before use, so Patrick sets that up and peruses the instruction manual front to back with a bottle of beer and microwaved leftovers. He’s not about to plug his brain into a virtual reality without reading the fine print, however much Mikey and Sachin and Ian probably would’ve laughed at him if they found out he had. 

Mikey and Sachin and Ian are the reason he’s doing this at all, really. He’d seen them and other members of their loose baseball-hockey-theater-honors classes conglomeration from high school posting on Facebook, getting psyched about the game’s early reviews, and the part of Patrick that feels guilty for missing the last few class reunions thought  _ this is my chance.  _

_ “Count me in! 💪💪💪”  _ he’d commented on Mikey’s post, and loose plans had spiralled from there to all meet up, virtually at least, the first night the game is available. 

It’ll be like old times on two fronts, he hopes, as he gets comfortable on the couch and turns the console over in his palm. Getting way too into a video game and hanging with the guys. Just like high school. 

He briefly considers texting someone before he logs onto the game; he’s still a little leery about the whole connecting-his-mind thing. What if he gets trapped in there, his body frozen and forgotten on his couch? But who would he text, anyway? His parents are six hours away - further than that, when he factors in the emotional distance that’s grown between them. Ray, maybe, but his old roommate probably wouldn’t wait the allotted amount of time before coming to check on Patrick, and he doesn’t want to be yanked out every five minutes just because Ray’s gotten nervous. 

_ David will come looking for me _ , he assures himself, lifting the console to his temple.  _ If only because he needs me to open the store at 9AM.  _

And with that cheery thought, he presses the cool metal underside of the console to his skin, flinches at the slight electric charge as it somehow attaches there, and enters the game. 

He feels at first like he’s just emerged from a vat of molasses. His limbs feel strange and everything is dark. He can still vaguely recognize the sensation of the couch underneath his legs, the texture of his jeans under his palms - but he knows those things to be real the way he knows his name. It’s just  _ there _ , as much as it’s not. 

“Loading user preferences,” chirps a pleasant, androgynous voice from - overhead, he wants to say, but it’s more just  _ around _ . “Please choose your avatar.” 

Okay, this is definitely super fucking weird, but he can’t deny he feels giddy with how futuristic it is. He’s  _ inside a game _ and now he can see a reflection of himself in the nothing ahead of him Except instead of the reflection he’s used to, he’s a tall, gangly, alienoid grey form. He swipes experimentally; the reflection’s fingers move through the air and its entire form squinches inward, like a photo poorly shrunk in Microsoft Paint. 

“Oooh, okay,” he grins, rubbing his hands together. “I get it, I get it.” 

Conscious of his appointment to meet up with his friends but feeling the power of a minor god, he shapes and reshapes the avatar before him until it’s something approximating his own build. He guesses he could represent himself however he wants in here, but for the first run he thinks he’ll feel more comfortable if he’s...him. That’s why, when he’s finished with the general form, he adds on a blue polo, some dark jeans, and one of the preset hairstyles that reminds him of the mop he’d rocked in college. 

“Not bad, not bad,” he murmurs, twisting this way and that to check himself out. The longer he spends in here, the more control he feels he has over this shape, its movements. Like he’s more fully here. The texture of his jeans in the real world is now mixed with the VR jeans he sees himself wearing; he feels them both. 

There’s a little display in the corner of his field of vision; it moves as he turns his head so that he can always see it. He looks directly at it now, sees the randomized letters and numbers that are his computer-generated username; the stats on battery usage of the console; options for story mode or free play; pending invites, which can be sent by other users in the game but can also be received via email; and - shit, is that really the time? 

He clicks into the pending invites - really, he reaches out and plucks up the envelope icon, grinning because just  _ what even is life -  _ and finds one waiting there, sent to pbrewer@mail.com by Sachin. 

He looks up into the general darkness. “Take me there,” he says. 

There’s no woosh of air or rushing sound but the transition is still so startling he thinks he’s going to be sick. One second he’s standing there, in the nothing of the entry portal, the next he’s squinting into the late afternoon sun that illuminates what is, if he’s not mistaken, Rogers Centre, home of the Blue Jays. 

He’s standing in the middle of the outfield, and though he hasn’t been on this field since a school trip when he was ten, he knows how scary-accurate it is, from the curve of the stands to the stretches of ads and light displays. It even  _ smells _ right. 

“Holy shit,” he whispers, squatting to run his hand over the neatly manicured grass. He can  _ feel _ the tips of the blades tickling his palm. None of this is real, but  _ damn  _ if it isn’t a convincing simulation. 

He stands up and, ignoring the few other people milling about the field, lets out a triumphant whoop that echoes through the empty stands. It feels good to be back on a field. 

“Patrick! I’d recognize that stupid mug of yours anywhere!” 

He turns in time to see someone leaping off the top of the scoreboard; his heart gets in a good jolt of panic before he sees the way they soar effortlessly through the air and land in a superhero crouch. Okay, so laws of physics and human capabilities are not exactly applicable in here, got it. Something to explore for later. 

It’s undoubtedly Ian, standing and brushing his knees like that jump was nothing. He must’ve gone the same ‘do what you know’ route as Patrick when outfitting his avatar: The face is a bit off, the features almost too neat, and his voice has been altered - part of the game’s effort to maintain anonymity - but it’s Ian. 

“Hey, man! Great to see you!” Patrick laughs, catching Ian’s hug as he crashes into him. 

“Too fucking long, Brewer!” Ian proclaims, shaking Patrick by the shoulders. 

“I know, I know,” Patrick sighs, ducking his head; he wonders if he should start the apology tour now or wait until everyone’s around so he can knock them all out at once. “We’ve got a lot of time to make up for. Wanna play catch until the others get here?” He glances around for a baseball. 

“Oh, hey, you didn’t get the message? Sachin’s got a thing with his kids and Mikey has to work late.” 

“Oh.” Patrick tries to recalibrate around the disappointment in his stomach. He lost the right to be disappointed when he stopped reaching out to people. “Okay. I thought-”

“It’s all good, man, it’s all good, I have some friends from work who are throwing this massive beach party because you can get smashed in here and not feel a thing - I’ll send you the details and we can just hang out with them!” 

So Patrick’s night goes from an eagerly anticipated reunion with his closest friends to a ramble through a drunken crowd of people he doesn’t know. He’s not against big parties, even finds himself getting into the swing of things after a bit, chatting with people and enjoying the way he can just  _ wish _ drink refills into his cup, but they’d planned to start the game’s story mode and work through the adventure together. He’d envisioned a compelling narrative arc of exploring and sleuthing while rebuilding the bonds with his old friends. This beach rave is easier - and far more disappointing. 

As Ian had said, he feels himself get drunk and sober again in disconcerting waves, the game seemingly resetting his internal equilibrium. Around him, scraped knees and cut lips from falls and brawls heal so quickly as to make them fast forgotten. The game takes away the consequences, Patrick realizes; it’s why it had been so popular when it was just a combat game, and it’s why it’ll be so popular now, expanded for general use, possibilities endless. 

At the end of the night, he’s not surprised to find, as he blinks slowly back into the dim light of his apartment, that but for the slight thrill of adrenaline there’s no tangible evidence of anything from the game: no queasy six-beer stomach, no tender cheeks from too long in the sun. It had felt so  _ real _ . 

He shakes himself; he both gets the appeal and is very, very turned off by it. 

_  
  
  
  
_

“Smack anyone down last night?” David asks the second he breezes into the store the next day. 

“Oh, you know,” Patrick shrugs, but as David passes by him he feints, pretends to shoot out a hand in a chopping motion. David squeaks, his arm coming up to block Patrick’s with surprising alacrity. 

“Save it for the game, Popeye,” David says, twisting his extended arm around Patrick’s so he can grip his wrist before pressing it, and Patrick, back against the wall and sliding past into the stock room. 

“Well,” says Stevie, whom Patrick had not noticed come in behind David, “that looked  _ completely _ businesslike.” 

“Oh, hi, Stevie.” 

Stevie has a habit of showing up when Patrick doesn’t expect her. Okay, it was just the one time, and it wasn’t even a date. And he really doesn’t harbor any resentment towards her. All she’d done was consent to acting as a buffer between her friend and his clearly-too-starry-eyed coworker who definitely needed (still needs) to be knocked over the head with reality a few times. He’s sure Stevie would gleefully volunteer for head-knocking, if he were to confide his embarrassingly resilient crush to her. 

Patrick could blame the rising heat in his cheeks on the crisp fall air they’d let in through the front door, but Stevie seems to  _ get _ things. It’s why he trusts that her presence at David’s birthday not-a-date dinner was a clear signal. 

She’s smirking at him now like she knows exactly what he’s thinking. 

“Good to see you too, Stevie,” he manages, ignoring her barb at their playfighting. 

“Is that what I said?” she asks, head tilted. 

They briefly stare each other down, Patrick wishing, not for the first time, that he could tap into the telepathic channel Stevie and David seem to share, but then David’s back, pulling open the drawer below the cash to pretend to help with the opening chores like he does every day. 

“Hey Patrick,” Stevie says casually, “I heard people are using that new game to, you know-” 

David looks up just in time to catch Stevie’s crude gesture. 

“I mean, I  _ wouldn’t  _ know, actually” Patrick says, “but - I can kind of understand why. In the game, you look different, you sound different, no one knows your name, there are no repercussions-”

Stevie wrinkles her nose. “Sounds a bit too much like  _ Westworld _ , and if  _ I’m _ saying that-”

“Of  _ course _ people are using it to fuck,” David interrupts, and he’s standing far too close to Patrick for this kind of talk. Patrick leans back against the cool tile of the wall, begging it to ground him. “Isn’t it a truth universally acknowledged that humans will use every new technology for sex? I had to delete Snapchat because of all the terrible, horrible, unseeable things on there.” 

“Does virtual reality sex count as real sex?” Stevie muses, like this isn’t a place of business on a Saturday morning. 

“Yes,” David pronounces, just as Patrick firmly says, “No.” They glance at each other. 

“It’s all in your mind,” Patrick presses on, despite his better judgment and his burning ears and the distracting protrusion of David’s lower lip. “You’d have to count dreams and fantasies as sex too, then.” 

David shakes his head. “Dreams happen without your consent. From my admittedly very limited understanding of virtual reality, it’s something you  _ choose  _ and  _ act on _ . It’s like, you  _ would _ be doing it with your body if you could, right?”

Patrick would be doing a lot of things with his body if he could. “I mean, yeah, but-” 

“Would you come?” They both glance at Stevie, who’s got an honest-to-god bag of cheesy popcorn open and is eating it while this conversation happens. “Like, could you come in real life from VR sex? Could you wake up from the game and find a mess in your pants?” 

This time David and Stevie both look at Patrick, who spreads his hands helplessly. “Don’t look at me, I don’t know! I’m not having kinky virtual reality hookups.” 

“I’ll check Reddit. And don’t worry, Patrick,” Stevie adds, not even looking up from her phone, “it’s okay if your virtual reality hookups are very vanilla. This is a safe space.”

Patrick opens his mouth to protest, or maybe to flee, but David’s biting down a smirk and patting his arm comfortingly, pityingly. The part of him that always feels compelled to run directly into any David-related fires - whether to help him or tease him - takes over. “Well, I would argue that vanilla virtual hookups are better than driving an hour for what turns out to be a seventy-year-old catfish.” 

David claps a hand over his own mouth but a laugh still squeaks out; Stevie rounds on him. “I told you that  _ in confidence! _ ” 

Practically glowing, David gives Patrick’s arm a final grateful pat and says, “Shh, Stevie, focus, we’re teasing Patrick right now.” 

After Stevie has left (with an armful of discounted carrots and apples), David leans faux-casually against the doorframe to the stockroom. 

“But really, how was the game last night?” he asks. 

Patrick smiles to himself and the product labels he’s printing. He’s not even sure what David’s angling at, but he’s definitely angling at  _ something _ . “Oh, it was okay.” He shrugs. “I was supposed to meet up with some friends but most of them couldn’t make it. It happens.” 

He looks up in time to see David’s face doing something that looks painful. “Do you...want to talk about it?” 

It’s tempting in a way that makes his chest ache, but it’s also impossible; it’s already taking everything in him to maintain professional boundaries with David, and offloading his messy personal history and ongoing angst will only make that harder. “Thank you, but that’s okay. I’m impressed that you offered, though.” 

David shrugs with his shoulder and hip and eyes all at once. “I guess I’m getting used to being everyone’s therapist.” 

“Everything okay?” 

“Oh, you know.” His voice is exasperated but Patrick knows his expressions enough to read the real tension on his face. “Alexis is still hung up on Ted, Stevie and my dad constantly want to vent about each other to me, and my mom is Moira Rose, so.” 

Patrick wants to ask, but - boundaries. He straightens the completed sheets of labels and carries them out onto the sales floor, telling David as he passes, “I think you’re very brave.” 

He can  _ hear _ the look on David’s face. “I regret hiring you every day.” 

With his most beatific smile, Patrick replies, “No you don’t.” 

David sighs sullenly. “No. I don’t.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A bit more exposition but we're getting there

Patrick isn’t in a rush to get back into the game, but he winds up there a few nights later, drawn by a conjunction of boredom and curiosity and the unbearable itch he gets when something feels difficult, the itch that makes him want to try and try and try and solve and fix. He’s still really intrigued by the story mode option, but after hesitating for a moment he clicks back into the free play mode. Maybe Ian and the guys will want to play again someday. 

It’s definitely at least partially David and Stevie’s fault that he hesitates in the menu portal, looking at the avatar he’d constructed the night before. It’s obvious how Ian had recognized him without difficulty; he’s been wearing a slight variation on the same clothes and hairstyle for two decades, and he’d dressed his avatar the same way.

So this time, he steps out into the world of the game unrecognizable, or so he hopes: he’s made his hips narrower, his legs longer, his arms skinnier; his hair is blonde, buzzed almost to peach fuzz, and he’s traded in the jeans and shirt for one of the ‘combat casual’ outfits the game recommends. 

He doesn’t know if he likes not looking like himself. He’s never experimented with his look much in real life - he’s never really felt the need to. He gets the appeal on a certain level, but it also adds a degree of unpredictability to how other people will interact with him, how they’ll read him and what conclusions they’ll draw. Patrick doesn’t generally enjoy unpredictability. 

But he’s also not sure if he’s changed his avatar to  _ avoid _ the kind of salacious sexual encounters Stevie and David had teased him about - or to  _ encourage _ those encounters. Again: possibility but unpredictability. It all being virtual, with no tangible consequences in the real world, doesn’t necessarily make him feel better. Clothes and haircuts and different physiques are one thing, but he doesn’t think he’ll be able to try hookups or relationships on in here and then just leave them behind. 

He shakes out his uncomfortably lithe arms and heads off at a trot across the empty parking lot the game has dropped him into. He doesn’t have plans to meet up with anyone tonight, so he’s hoping to just explore a bit, get a sense of the game and his capabilities within it, and stay out of trouble. 

A few people he passes try to engage him in fights - because yeah, for some people that’s still the appeal of the game. He’s read that there are already betting rings popping up, with people placing real money on the outcome of fights in here. He politely declines, or, in one instance, sprints away as fast as he can, which turns out to be much faster than in the real world. He wonders if there are any baseball leagues cropping up in here. 

This thought draws him up short - literally; he stops sprinting in the middle of a highway overpass, eerily empty without cars. He loves baseball on every level, from the childhood memories crafted on autumn evenings playing catch with his dad to attending as many Blue Jays home games with his mom as they could afford, from the tactile memory of gripping his high school’s rattiest bats to the rush of exhilaration when a game is in the bag, when the team - whether he’s on it or not - loses their shit and starts tackling each other. He  _ loves _ it. But love and choice hadn’t been the only factors there. He’d been steered away from track and field because he was too stocky; from basketball because he was too short; from dance because, well, it was still rural Canada and he was still a boy. 

In here? He can be lanky enough for sprints and pole vaults; tall enough to be a point guard; free enough to - okay, he’s still not really that interested in dance, but he could  _ try  _ it. 

He looks down at the body he’s constructed tonight. Maybe he doesn’t have to feel like himself. Maybe he doesn’t even have to particularly enjoy being something other than himself. Maybe he can use this flexibility, this blank slate, essentially, in service to the version of him that he  _ does _ like, that he  _ does _ enjoy being, out there. He could go anywhere and do just about anything - all the things he couldn’t afford to do when he was putting himself through college, all the things he put off because of responsibilities to aging grandparents and friends in distress; all the things he’d avoided thinking about, right up through the moment he ended an engagement. 

He’s breathing a little quickly, he finds, as he tunes back into his virtually-generated surroundings. There’s a girl riding a unicycle on the sheer-drop edge of the freeway overpass. Across the river that flows under the overpass, a group of people are bungee-jumping sans equipment, just plummeting off the cliff and bouncing back up from the water, unharmed and whooping. There are also people  _ in  _ the river, floating downstream or swimming casually against the current. Patrick chuckles ruefully; presented with the opportunity to throw over everything he knows, his first reaction had been to stick to the familiar. He understands it as a human impulse, but, damn, he envies these people who’d immediately seized onto the endless potential here. The endless  _ freedom _ . 

He lets his shoulders relax and he closes his eyes.  _ If I could go anywhere _ ... His first thought is to go to his hometown, which - okay, he should call his parents. He will. Soon. Soonish. But there’s no point in going there now; they won’t be in the game, and it’ll definitely just make him sad to walk through their empty house, if that’s even how this game works. He doesn’t know how much of the scenery is programmed in. Is the house there if no one who knows it is looking at it? If he thinks about it, do his memories inform the version of the house in the game, or is there some objective version there? 

Shaking himself and resolving to do some reading up on ... all of this tomorrow, he focuses instead on a place he’s never been, a place that exists, to him at least, only in a book.

The next second, he can feel the change in the air, and he waits a breath to open his eyes, wanting to just feel it, the sun and the sea breeze and the sensation of  _ no one knows me and no one knows I’m here _ . 

When he does finally look, it’s different, because of course it is - the book was set in the 1940s, and he’s - well, he doesn’t know what era the game is supposed to exist in, but based on the advertisements outside some of the cafes lining the street, it’s at least modern day. A fleet of pastel-colored buildings climb the hillside, and out past the street and the pale sand, the bay is the soothing blue-green of an ice pack after a baseball to the arm or a snow cone at the fair. 

“Mmkay, when I was here last there were  _ not _ this many tourists.” 

He turns and shields his eyes to look at the person frowning down at the beach, their nose wrinkled. They’re just taller than him, and he gets a vague impression of...kind of an androgynous Jewish Channing Tatum, though he never would’ve had any idea what that meant until he’d seen it. It’s...confusing and appealing all at once. In a rush of gratitude, he feels like he gets it, a bit more, this whole notion of trying things on for size until things feel right, or maybe just because you can. 

“You’ve been to [Cephalonia](https://media.tacdn.com/media/attractions-splice-spp-674x446/07/8c/16/85.jpg) before?” he asks, assuming at this point that they had been talking to him. “School trip?” 

They turn to him, the full weight of their blue eyes sending a pleasant frisson through his gut. It’s a color that conveys equal parts warmth and cool, like the bay. “Please. Even the kinds of schools I regularly dropped out of couldn’t afford that. No, my sojourns here were purely personal adventures.  _ Quite  _ a few summer dalliances with strapping Greek and Italian youth.” 

“Ah.” Patrick’s never had a personal adventure bigger than a weeklong camping trip. Well, and quitting his job, leaving his fiancee, and moving to a new town, but - different kind of adventure. “And it used to be more...chill?” 

“ _ Way _ more chill. Like...” They gesture to the people playing chicken in the shallows, the kids wrestling in the sand, a group cliff diving in the distance. “What even is this, Burning Man?!” 

“I think it might have something to do with the movie,” Patrick suggests. 

They look at him blankly. 

“ _ Captain Correlli’s Mandolin _ . With Nicolas Cage? In like 2000, 2001, something like that.” 

Their beautiful face twists with a disgust that is still, somehow, beautiful. “Oh my god. So all these people saw Nic  _ fucking  _ Cage and thought ‘I want what he’s having’?!” 

Patrick grins. “Some people like Nicolas Cage.” 

“Are you one of them? Because I knew this was a combat game but I didn’t realize I’d have to punch anyone  _ quite _ this soon.” 

Patrick puts his hands up, pretending to block an incoming punch this person clearly has no actual intention of throwing. “Easy, easy, I’m decidedly apathetic about ol’ Nic. I’ve never even seen the movie. ” 

“Hmph.  _ Decidedly apathetic _ is  _ decidedly  _ too weak of a stance, in my opinion.” They roll their shoulders in a disgruntled motion that makes the loud floral shirt they’re wearing shimmy and settle. “Why are  _ you _ here, if you haven’t seen the movie that’s brought the other frothing masses?” 

“Well, before it was a movie, it was a book, which I liked a lot, and I always wanted to come see what Cephalonia actually looked like.” 

Their face tilts almost involuntarily towards Patrick. “A book?” 

“A novel. It’s set during World War Two -”

“ _ Oh _ . A  _ war _ book. I forgot what kind of game this is, or used to be, whatever.” 

“It’s not a war book!” Patrick rushes to say. He might’ve passed it off as such, to his friends who teased him for reading it so many times he’d had to tape its spine, but it’s really not. “I mean, the war is in it, and around it, and there’s tragedy and enemies, but it’s - it’s about love,” he settles on, and oh god, he’s in a virtual reality game talking to a stranger about love. If this is not a reflection of how his last year has gone... “All kinds of love. Forbidden love and lost love and familial love and ancestral love of a place. And it’s about music, too. I, uh, I rented a mandolin, briefly, in college,” he admits, reaching up to scrub at his hair before remembering that he’d chosen a buzz cut tonight. “Decided I was better off sticking with the guitar.” 

The affected disinterest on the stranger’s face is melting away as they listen to Patrick. “Probably for the best,” they sniff, but it’s a little breathy, intrigued. “Mandolins are  _ very  _ cringey.” 

Patrick would bet they don’t know the difference between a mandolin and a mandoline, but he lets it slide for now.

“If you liked the book so much, why didn’t you ever see the movie? Are you one of those no-adaptions-ever purists?”

“No, uh, nothing that noble. I just didn’t want to ruin the picture the book created in my head. I hoped I’d get here someday, and it almost felt like the movie would be like a spoiler? For my own life?” he admits sheepishly, grinning up at the stranger. 

“Hmm.” They frown, squinting up at the sky. “I get that. Like, the fear that...that the reality won’t live up to the dream.” 

“Yeah.” Patrick swallows around a sudden emotion, a startled sense of affinity at hearing his feelings expressed so clearly by someone else. “Do you want to take a walk or something? Try to find a less touristy part of the island for you? These hills look great for hiking.” 

“Um, a walk and a hike should  _ never _ be conflated. Very misleading.” Their face twitches and they look up into the air, swatting at it like there’s a fly buzzing near their ear. “Ugh. I have to go. It was, um. It was nice to meet you.” 

“You-” But they’ve vanished before he can even say  _ too _ . 

  
  
  


It’s surprisingly not difficult, at least at first, to separate the surreal, too-real experiences in the game from his day to day. His days, though to all appearances more humbler than what he can do in the game, have their own technicolor. 

“So what do we think about these samples Ray sent over?” 

David, cross-legged on the backroom couch, looks between the leering plastic jack o'lantern in Patrick’s left hand and the garland of fake caramel-covered apples in the right. He carefully sets down the fork he’s been using to dissect his chicken salad and brushes off his hands unnecessarily. 

“What do we  _ think _ about them?” he asks. 

“Yeah,” Patrick says, keeping his face determinedly neutral. “I know you had floated the idea of commissioning actual carved pumpkins for the front of the store, but this is pretty convincing.” 

“Patrick.” David’s voice, serious and with an edge of chiding, tightens something in Patrick’s gut. “What about my store has led you to believe that  _ either  _ of those  _ affronts _ would be a valued addition to the curated sensory experience we value here at Rose Apothecary?” 

“It’s just, commissions cost money, and these are free. Everybody loves free things, David.” 

“I will  _ pay you  _ to never praise free things again.” 

“So... that’s a vote for the candied apples, then?” 

Twyla must have added extra cocoa powder to David’s coffee this morning, because though he clenches his jaw for a delicious moment, he manages a customer-service smile and redirects. “You know, I briefly dated this woman who was  _ obsessed _ with Halloween. Like, we dated in February, and she was already working on her costume. Her Valentine’s Day gift to me was a ticket to Transylvania, which I obviously did not use. Traded it in for an amazing weekend in Saint Barthelemy. Hmm.” He smiles to himself, a real smile this time. 

“See, that was a free thing you liked!”

“That was a  _ gift _ , Patrick. That’s different then this...attempt to trap us into buying low-quality, tacky, branded miscellanea.” He stretches out from the couch to turn one of the apples so Patrick can see Ray’s beaming face lacquered to the plastic. 

“What about a Halloween party?” Patrick winds the garland back around his arm, giving this particular joke up for now. “We could have a costume contest, we could feature seasonal items from our vendors, you could curate a themed but respectable playlist.”

“Okay, while this is not the  _ worst _ idea you’ve ever had, I would require much more time to be able to set up an event that would live up to my standards.”

“You and I could coordinate our costumes.” 

“Like a couple’s costume?” David snorts, then winces. “Not that - not that we’re a-” 

Admittedly Patrick had not thought through how that would look or sound. “Yeah, like a - an Apothecary-themed pair of costumes, somehow. Oh well, maybe I’ll ask Stevie instead. Ted said he has about a dozen punny costume ideas, which I’m sure is right up Stevie’s alley.” He shakes the sample decorations in David’s direction again. “Sure I can’t tempt you?” 

“Throw them out, Patrick.  _ Throw. Them. Out _ .” 

As he turns to go, David catches the end of the garland and tugs gently. “I ... will... reach out to vendors about seasonal items for a cute little display. That’s not a bad idea. And I guess we could offer a free caramel or something, if people come to shop in their costumes, or whatever.” 

“Thank you, David.” Patrick contains his delight, but only a little; he likes the way it makes David squirm. “That’s a remarkable compromise on your part. I’m proud of you.” 

“Don’t condescend to me! And don’t you dare ask Stevie about doing a costume with you. She’d probably say yes just to fuck with me.” 

“Would Alexis be better?” 

“Oh my god  _ no _ , I do not need to see what her idea of a sexy body milk costume would be.” 

They both shudder. 

  
  
  
  


Patrick continues to play  _ Striking Vipers _ now and then, but none of the interactions are remotely as interesting as that conversation with a stranger on a sunny sidewalk in Cephalonia. He thinks about reaching out to his high school friends again, but neither Mikey nor Sachin had said anything about their nonappearances that first night, and their silence weighs on him - whether from bitterness or his own guilt and feeling that it’s deserved, he’s not sure. 

Ever the optimist, he still avoids story mode, saving it for the day when he fixes things with people. Instead, he makes a list of places he’s always wanted to see and starts tackling them one by one. Honestly, he’s never spent much time alone, so this kind of world travel is profoundly novel to him in several ways. He visits New Zealand and can  _ almost  _ bring himself to skip around like a hobbit; he’s apparently not quite there yet with accepting the freedom of the game. On a night when he’s feeling daunted by a slow week at the store, he floats for an hour in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. He even spends one night at the only remaining Rose Video in North America. He doesn’t mention it to David the next morning - it feels like a violation somehow. 

A couple weeks after he’d visited Cephalonia for the first time, he’s shading his eyes as he looks up at the ruins of a temple in eastern Mexico when a pair of sunglasses appear in front of him. 

“Here,” says the voice belonging to the owner of the hand extending the sunglasses. 

“Oh! Thanks.” He takes them gratefully. 

The giftbearer frowns. “Hmm. Not quite right.” The face under a shock of neon green hair twists in concentration, and Patrick literally feels the sunglasses change on his face. “Better.” 

“Woah,” he laughs, taking the glasses off to look at them; they’ve entirely changed shape and color. “I keep forgetting we can just - do that.” 

They smirk. “What have you been doing since Cephalonia, that you haven’t been trying stuff like that?” 

“Cephalonia - hey! You’re the person from - How’d you know it was me?”

“Your username.” They gesture above Patrick’s head, where he knows - from seeing it on others - his random string of numbers and letters hangs in the air. He’d been too rushed that first night to change it, and he’s just never gotten around to it. “All I remembered from seeing it last time was that sequence that’s like bA9b01, which I read as, um, bag boy? I’ve been calling you bag boy in my head. I had an audition to be a grocery store bag boy a few years ago, so thanks for reminding me of  _ that  _ trauma.” 

Patrick laughs. He glances upwards, though he knows the username will move in concert with his head so that he can’t see it. “Well, I’m sorry about that, but I’m very impressed with your use of a mnemonic. What are the odds, do you think, of us running into each other again, in a game this large?” 

“Oh, no, I don’t do math.” But they’re smiling, and Patrick is nothing if not motivated by other people’s smiles. He’d invested in a business based in equal parts on the owner’s ideas and his smiles. 

“You can call me Carlo, if that’s easier,” Patrick offers. Off their look, he explains, only blushing slightly, “He’s a character in the novel I mentioned.” 

“Ah. The hero, I assume?” 

“Actually, no. That’s Antonio. Though Pelagia is more the protagonist.” 

“Why not christen yourself Antonio, then? You could be anyone, here.” 

Patrick can’t really say - or rather, he won’t; doesn’t dare explain that his thoughts had flown immediately to Carlo and his doomed love for his best friend, Francesco. “I’ve never seen myself as the hero.” 

This draws a full groan. “Ugh! You’re so earnest. Like, Vanessa Hudgens in her breakout role earnest. Well, I’ve never read this book and I don’t trust you to pick out a flattering name for me, based on your self-naming convention, so I’ll be...” They cast about, shimmying a bit as they consider the temple and the surrounding rainforest. “Hugh,” they finally announce, nodding decisively. 

“Hmm. Grant? Laurie? Dancy? Jackman? Hefner?” 

“All of the above,” Hugh beams, “except Hefner. Definitely not Hefner.” 

“Nice to meet you, Hugh,” Patrick says, and though Hugh rolls his eyes, he shakes the hand Patrick offers. It’s a fake handshake in a game, only in their minds, but Patrick savors the way his hand feels enveloped by Hugh’s. 

“While we’re establishing identities, I use he/him, by the way,” Hugh adds, and Patrick aches, sharply and inexplicably, to be someone who moves in spaces where that is offered instead of assumed. No one in the series of small towns that he’s lived in has ever seen him as anything but how they expected him to be. 

“Me too,” he says, because he can’t say any of that, not even to this internet stranger, not yet. “We should, uh, change our usernames so that we can find each other more easily,” he adds, more boldly than he feels. 

“Good idea,” and then Hugh kind of...zones out, it seems, as he retreats into that entry portal space where form and clothes and settings are chosen. It’s weird to watch, his eyes a little vacant. 

Patrick shakes himself and follows suit, clicking through the settings to change his name to carlocan86. 

When he’s back in his body, such as it is, Hugh has changed into a floral one-piece romper, which, again, Patrick finds all kinds of confusing and appealing. He grins, this pleasant newness settling in him like a good glass of wine. It’s not unlike the way David constantly upends his notions of men’s fashion, though Hugh, with his bold colors and eye-catching patterns, is such a departure from David.

“Have you ever been to Mexico before?” Patrick asks. 

Not only has Hugh been to Mexico more times than Patrick has been to Regina, he’s somehow retained an encyclopedic knowledge about Mayan history, “because someone had to pay attention while everyone else was hungover on the tours.” Patrick teases him about that level of nerdiness, impervious to (and maybe even not-so-secretly delighting in) the snark Hugh lobs back about Patrick’s hard-on for a war novel. And Hugh might not be able to remember important dates or archeologists’ names but he shares the most beautiful details as they walk around the site. He knows about the development of the Maya script, he knows how the temples were used to track the sun, he even professes to having himself collaborated with a Maya artisan, though he doesn’t go into personal details beyond that. 

“You’d make a good tour guide,” Patrick says honestly, when they’re back where they’d started. “Or a car salesman. I’d be ready to buy this puppy, if it weren’t an important historical and cultural landmark and if I weren’t in a very humble financial situation.” 

“Mhm, can’t say either tour guide or car salesman are on my vision board, but thanks so much.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Captain Correlli's Mandolin is very much both a war story and a love story. I'm re-reading it now and had forgotten how much war is in it because the love is what stays with you. The first sentence in the "major themes" section of the Wikipedia page for the book is "Captain Corelli's Mandolin explores many varieties of love", which is SO Schitt's Creek. Still, there are some intense scenes and topics, so if you're interested but wary of anything in particular, feel free to ask me here or on Tumblr!


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In this chapter: things are starting to get frissskky.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Have I mentioned being embarrassed by my own smut? *hides head in hands for the duration*

Patrick rubs his brow, tossing down his pen in frustration. The month ended last week and he’s more delayed in wrangling with their quarterly numbers than he’d prefer. 

“Once you accept that first dates are historically, certifiably, statistically cringey, you can stop avoiding them!” 

He chuckles. Stevie’s here, allegedly to help David close up while Patrick does the paperwork, but they’ve been on Bumpkin for half an hour now, putting in a wider and wider range to expand the net. Based on Stevie’s monosyllabic responses to David’s queries when she’d arrived, she hadn’t had a great day, so Patrick’s decided to let them squabble over drinks and shirtless pictures instead of bothering them about the chores. 

The numbers are starting to swim in front of his eyes; time to give it up for tonight. 

Out on the sales floor, he pauses in front of David and Stevie, who look up from Stevie’s phone. 

“Did we win the quarter?” David asks. 

“Don’t know yet,” Patrick admits. “It’s kind of giving me hell. Speaking of which - Stevie, you don’t happen to have a joint on you, do you?” 

Stevie starts patting her pockets while David gasps, pawing the air in Patrick’s direction. 

“Mr. _Brewer_ !” David squawks, delighted. “ _Drugs?!_ ” 

Patrick shrugs, blushing, more because of David’s attention than the not-so-scandalous request he’s just made. “Yeah, I have a hard time sleeping when I leave something unfinished. I just need something to help me relax a bit.” 

“Maybe _you_ should be on Bumpkin,” Stevie suggests. She turns up her empty palms. “Sorry, I don’t have anything on me.” 

“Stevie, Patrick deserves better than the Bumpkin offerings,” David says sternly. 

“But they’re fine for _me_?” she demands, slapping his arm. 

“You and I don’t have standards, or souls,” he explains with a prim sip of his wine. “Do you want to talk about it?” he directs at Patrick. “You can join us if you want. We have - um, white wine, and more white wine-” 

He knows it’s just a reflex, this offer David keeps making to talk about things. He sees the way David takes on other people’s worries and he doesn’t want to add to that. Besides, drinking and talking about dates with his crush and his crush’s best friend slash ex seems like a violation of the boundaries he’s working on. 

“Nah, that’s okay. White wine makes me weepy, honestly.” 

Stevie and David exchange a smirk that he doesn’t understand. 

  
  
  
  
  


He doesn’t let himself play _Striking Vipers_ again until he’s finished with the quarterly reports - a lingering bad habit from college of all work and no play. Hugh doesn’t mention his absence, the next time they meet up. They’re both excessively casual about it, avoiding making solid plans, but between entirely unsubtle hints and backhanded invitations, over the next week they end up exploring Versailles and Sydney and Cape Town together. 

He can’t deny that Hugh intrigues him, that he feels free to look and admire and maybe even think about wanting with him in a way he hasn’t, generally, before. In a way he tries not to let himself with David, he can admit, because they’re friends and business partners and David doesn’t see him that way and he’s shoved it into its appropriate mental box. He even thinks Hugh might be reciprocating the interest, and that’s an invitation Patrick is eager to accept. 

So while he spends his days running a successful business and trying not to trip over his own feet as he moons after David from afar - if you can moon from afar over the person standing next to you - he spends his nights seeing how close he can get to brushing the back of his hand against Hugh’s as they walk. 

One night they return to Cephalonia, hopping from beach to beach until they find a quiet one. 

“This is _much_ better,” Hugh sighs, sprawling onto the sand that doesn’t cling and itch the way real sand does. (“They _fixed sand_!” Hugh had exclaimed when they’d discovered this.) “No more grimy tourists.” 

Patrick lets himself look - today, Hugh’s avatar is large and muscular, dark-haired and a burnished gold like he comes from this part of the world - before he walks down to the water’s edge. “Yeah, this’ll do.” 

Hugh props himself up on his elbows. “ _This’ll do_ ? I’m sorry, who are you and what did you do with the Carlo who was starry-eyed over the _curtains_ at Versailles?” 

Patrick turns to face him so the warm water laps at his bare heels; he grins and shrugs. “What can I say? I’m a man of the world now. Not easily impressed.” 

“Hmm. As someone who is not easily impressed, I do _not_ recommend it.” 

There’s definitely something impressed in his gaze as he looks at Patrick, studies him intently from the ground. A sweet heat climbs in Patrick, that weird mix of experiencing intense sensation in the game but also _knowing_ it, knowing how it would feel in real life. 

“So, do you tell your friends in the real world that you’re in here fighting and being all manly and tough?” Hugh asks finally, propping one knee up - it’s jaunty, there’s no other word for it. 

“Who says I’m not? Maybe that’s how I spend the nights I’m not with you. What about me doesn’t proclaim _mixed martial arts champion_ to you?” 

“Right. It’s just, I obviously am not one to talk because I have been using this purely as escapism and if anyone so much as _thought_ about challenging me to a duel I’d fuck right off thanks so much, but you just don’t have that...energy about you. You’re very... _tame_.”

“Tame?!” 

“I mean that as a compliment! You’re not swaggering around trying to show everyone how hard you can swing your dick. It’s refreshing, honestly.” 

Now, Patrick has no interest in swinging his dick, which sounds very painful, but he’s always had a _thing_ about being underestimated and misunderstood. Accurate criticism he can swallow, but the last thing he wants is Hugh to not know - to not think-

“Alright, get up,” he orders, striding back towards Hugh. 

“Excuse me?” 

“C’mon, let me show you my moves.” 

“Your _moves_ ?” The way Hugh’s face changes every night, it’s hard for Patrick to get used to his expressions, but he looks equal parts delighted and offended. “I am _not_ fighting you, if that’s what you’re insinuating.” 

“Don’t worry, I won’t hurt you. I’ve been told I’m very _tame_.” 

He extends a hand, which Hugh eyes suspiciously before he grips it and hauls himself up. He’s so strong; Patrick hasn’t felt this turned on by someone’s hand since he shook David’s during their first appointment at Ray’s. 

“Just parrying,” he suggests, stepping back and squaring up in a slight squat, fists raised. “We won’t land any blows. It’s like play-fighting.” 

“Okay, I don’t understand half the words you’re saying and you look _ridiculous_.” 

“Humor me.”

Hugh rolls his eyes, but he raises his hands tentatively, mirroring Patrick. It’s the most this has felt like a video game, seeing this Adonis of a person against the backdrop of the island hillside. 

“If you screenshot this I will deny everything,” Hugh vows. 

It’s playing dirty, but Patrick doesn’t count them in or anything. He slips forward, whipping a hand towards Hugh’s exposed hip. Hugh stumbles back; there’s nothing graceful about it, and he almost falls. Patrick reaches out to grab his wrist and steady him, but Hugh shakes him loose. 

“You’re a filthy cheat,” he accuses, almost sounding pleased. 

Patrick grins and motions for Hugh to make the next move. “Come and get me,” he dares. 

Hugh bounces on the balls of his feet, eyes so calculating Patrick feels laid bare. 

When Hugh strides towards him, it’s too fast, it’s with all of his bulk, he’s going to bowl them both over into the surf-

Instead, Hugh’s powerful hands grip the back of Patrick’s head and tilt him up into a searing kiss. 

It’s literally too much to process, because Patrick’s trying to take it all in even as he tries to participate, because oh god he’s never been kissed by someone taller than him and the feeling of Hugh’s body firm and hot against his and he’s kissing with so much teeth which _yes fuck please_ ; he thinks he’s actually just groaned into Hugh’s mouth. 

He has to stand on tip-toe to level the field, finally getting his arms around Hugh’s neck and pushing back. Hugh’s tongue is a streak of fire over his lower lip. Patrick curls his fingers, taking in the moist, close tautness of the back of Hugh’s neck, the tensing of the muscles of his shoulders. 

It’s wordless and animal and Patrick feels both drunk on it and _parched_ , absolutely fucking parched; he’s sure there’s nothing remotely sexy about the way he’s mauling Hugh’s mouth but he’s never felt this electric. 

“Please,” Hugh breathes, and Patrick doesn’t know what he’s asking, but for this man, this gorgeous man - gorgeous in every iteration - to ask for something when he could have anything-

“Yes,” Patrick answers, the only feasible answer. 

Hugh is fumbling with his belt, and _oh yes_ , that’s a definite yes. Patrick reaches for the button on Hugh’s pants but he tilts his hips back and away. 

“I got this,” he hums, stripping Patrick’s jeans down to his ankles. 

Patrick sways, catching himself on Hugh’s shoulder. “But you sounded so desperate-” 

“I did _not_ sound _desperate_!” Hugh squawks, and he starts to rise, so Patrick slides his fingers into that luscious brown hair, choking on a laugh, willing to do anything to not derail where this is headed. 

“Not desperate, sorry,” he corrects himself humbly, and Hugh hums, disgruntled, toying with the hem of Patrick’s boxers. “You sounded like you wanted something.” 

He’s not at all prepared for the cheeky grin this elicits. Hugh leans closer, his cold fingertips sliding up Patrick’s bare thighs, reaching his hips under his shorts. “I did. I do. Believe it or not, I like this.” 

Patrick, who sometimes has trouble focusing at work because he’s imagining what it would be like to give a blow job, who has practiced giving head on an alarmingly bright yellow dildo, who has not stopped thinking about _sloppy mouth_ for three months, has no trouble believing this. 

He tries to say “cool” but has to cough to clear his throat. Hugh bites the leg of his boxers and tugs gently. “Then by all means,” Patrick finally manages, “proceed.” 

He has a momentary flash of panic, as Hugh finally pulls the boxers down, a rush of self-consciousness about his body before he remembers it’s not really his own, that it barely resembles him. He is, again, hit by the weirdness of that, the simultaneous freedom and disappointment. 

He quickly has no space for consideration of these tricky complexities, nor for the amusing thought that his bare ass is pointed towards the ocean, nor that he’s having his first gay sexual experience in a virtual reality video game, because virtual reality or not, Hugh’s mouth is transcendent. Patrick gasps and tips forward, supporting himself with both hands on Hugh’s generous shoulders as Hugh slides effortlessly up and down Patrick’s cock. 

Hugh, for his part, is apparently a world-class multitasker: even as he suckles at Patrick’s tip and swirls his tongue on the descent, his hands are everywhere, sneaking up under Patrick’s shirt to caress his stomach, soothing the clench of Patrick’s thighs as he tries to keep himself steady, bizarrely and magically gentle on Patrick’s ankle as he comes. 

Patrick sinks to his knees in the sand to kiss Hugh, both from a lack of knowing what to do next and because he just really, really wants to kiss him again. 

“See,” Hugh whispers, grinning as he pecks Patrick’s upper lip, “not desperate.” 

“Definitely not desperate. _Very_ impressive,” Patrick nods. “I just have one question.” 

Hugh’s eyebrows quirk up, and Patrick delights in making them twitch even more as he cups Hugh through his pants. 

“How long do you think refractory periods are in here?” 

Hugh’s head tips back in an intoxicating laugh. 

  
  
  


Patrick emerges from the game thrumming with adrenaline. Nothing that happened in the game _physically_ happened to him - definitely no cum in his shorts, but he will _not_ be reporting those findings to Stevie - but the memory of Hugh’s mouth and cock and, oh god, fingers is as strong as if he’d just been here in Patrick’s quiet apartment. 

He’s too stunned to move from the couch for a moment, but then he’s stumbling across the room, scrambling through his nightstand for the horrifying yellow dildo and bottle of lube that he keeps hidden even though he lives alone. He wavers between the couch and the bed before flopping onto his back on the bed, wriggling out of his pants and underwear. He’s half-hard already; in-game refractory periods had turned out to be _very_ accommodating and he’s never been so inspired. It’s like porn that you can craft and influence and feel. 

“I think that’s just sex,” he says out loud to himself and snorts. 

His jeans are caught around one ankle but he lets them hang there, too rushed. He drops the dildo onto the bed and dumps an excessive amount of lube into one palm before spreading it between both hands. 

He’s so grateful he’d started exploring all this months ago, when he’d started suspecting the real reason he’d never been able to make it work with Rachel. If he were trying this for the first time now, so desperate - _not desperate_ , Hugh’s voice chides - he would have no idea how to open himself up, how deeply to probe, how much he likes the stretch when he spreads his fingers, how he can kind of ... hold all of himself, with his fingers inside him and his palm against his perineum and his wrist jostling his balls, and how good that can feel, to lose track of anything but that handful of himself. 

He thinks he could come this way, though he never has before, but yeah, _very_ inspiring stuff tonight. He replaces his fingers with the dildo, its lack of warmth a needed counterpoint to the way it fills him. He grunts and throws his head back against the mattress, sliding his free hand up along his cock, and he wants to laugh with both relief and despair, that he’d denied himself this for so long, or been denied it, or some combination thereof. 

He works his shaft in rhythm with the dildo, tugging with one hand and thrusting with the other. He genuinely feels debauched, his forearms starting to burn as he picks up speed, but he just can’t - he needs - He’s always chased orgasm for the sensation before, and now it’s like that rising sensation is twined with a deeper need he can’t quite catch, and he chases both of them, tilting his hips into his own thrusts until he comes. He closes his eyes with a gasp, clenching down on the dildo as his hips stutter, and his mind helpfully conjures an image of a man with Hugh’s lips and David’s eyes. 

It’s easily the most powerful and most confusing orgasm he’s ever had. 

  
  
  
  
  


The next morning, Patrick glances up as David comes sweeping into the store, fashionably late and just damn fashionable as ever, and his stomach drops right through his feet. Or threatens to come up through his throat. Or something. Whatever it is, it’s uncomfortable and inconvenient as hell. 

Because okay, maybe Patrick has been hoping, in the hours since he woke up, that having an ‘actual gay experience’ would help him get over David. And while he normally wouldn’t consider having sex in virtual reality an 'actual experience', last night... last night had felt _so damn real_. He’d woken up already fully hard just from the memory of it. 

So yeah. Actual gay experience accomplished, albeit unconventionally. But it’s definitely doing nothing for getting him over David. Because here’s David, breezing past him, smelling like he’s been sprinkled with the essence of Aphrodite and brushed with fresh pine boughs, his shy little dimple beckoning hypnotically to Patrick like it always does - same as every morning. Except this time, Patrick _knows_ . Patrick knows approximately what it would feel like if David were to drop his bag on the counter, turn to Patrick, and just _devour him_. He can extrapolate how devastating his evocative lips would be as they kissed his mouth and down his throat. He can imagine, more than ever before, how David’s broad hands would feel on his cock. How his lips would feel brushing up Patrick’s rib cage. How his ass would clench down on Patrick, or vice versa. 

It’s making things much, much worse. 

_Woah there, tiger_ , says a voice in his head that sounds so much like David that he looks up in terror, thinking he’s spoken some of this aloud. Of course David would never say _woah there, tiger_ , would be offended by the very phrase, and Patrick hates that he knows that but also really, really loves it. 

“Are you okay?” Real David asks, stopping in his loop around the store - and in his recounting of Alexis’s thirteen infractions against humanity from that morning - to frown at Patrick. “You’re looking more pale than normal.” 

“Didn’t sleep well,” Patrick chokes out, which is a fucking lie, because he’d conked right out after pounding into his own ass with a dildo to achieve a splendid orgasm after having a transcendent virtual reality gay fuck. So. The lie will have to do. 

“Right,” David says, still looking at him suspiciously. “I actually have a theory about that?” 

“What?” 

“About the not sleeping well. Because you mentioned recently that you have trouble sleeping when you’ve left something unfinished? And Sam called this morning about a missing payment for her pumpkin Nanaimo bars-” 

“Shit.” Patrick drops his head into his hands. “ _Shit_ , David, I’m so sorry. That’s unacceptable, I’m so, so sorry.” 

“Patrick,” David says, his voice too gentle, “it’s Sam, she knows us, it’s fine. We’re not going to lose the account just because one payment is late.” 

Patrick winces. 

“Are _you_ fine, though?” David asks. 

“You _have_ to stop asking that!” Patrick snaps. He regrets it instantly, but god, he’d thought he was holding it together until David started checking in on him all the time. 

David recoils, face shuttering. “Wow. Okay. You really _did_ wake up on the wrong side of the bed, I guess. Forget I cared.” 

“David, that’s not-” Patrick grits his teeth against a frustrated huff. “This isn’t about you. I - I appreciate you asking. I just- I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but I don’t always deal well with messing up? And I know, it’s just one missed payment, but-” 

“But it’s not just one missed payment,” David finishes for him. 

“Yeah.” It’s the missed payment and the quarterly reports taking longer than they should and it’s trying to move on from his crush and, oh right, the whole ‘not talking to his friends and family for months’ thing. “I just...don’t know if you’re the person I should talk it through with.” 

David squints at him. “Because _I’m_ the problem? Oh god, are you thinking about quitting and leaving the store and-” 

“No, David, no,” Patrick laughs, because David and the store sometimes feel like the only reliable things in his life, even if they are also sources of some of his stress. “Because - because I don’t know where that professional line is, when we’re coworkers _and_ friends. And because you always seem to have enough to deal with.” 

He expects David to snip back with something about _oh so now I’m volatile and a mess, Patrick?!_ , but instead he gets an unexpectedly determined look in his eyes. “I...appreciate you trying to spare me,” David says carefully. “But you’re allowed to, like, ask things of people and leave it up to them if it’s something they can deal with. I, for example, wasn’t always the best at saying no to things? Which I know is shocking, considering how strong and independent and generally amazing I seem. But now I’m kind of proud, when I get the chance to say no, to choose.”

Patrick, who knows he absorbed both of his parents’ tendencies to try to anticipate other people’s needs, truly could not be more gobsmacked by this notion. 

“That’s - hmm.” He looks down at his own hands and wonders if he could do that, could just...ask David to be there for him, to listen. “Thank you, David. That means more than you know. I, uh, I still don’t know if I’m ready, but I appreciate it.” 

David just nods, smiling shyly, and taps the edge of the counter like Patrick has seen Alexis do. Patrick’s honestly not sure what he’d rate as more shocking: the sex last night or this, a seemingly simple conversation with David. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In personal news, after getting rear-ended on Sunday and having my car declared a total loss by insurance I am facing the prospect of finding a new used car in three days! So. Fun! But will probably still be updating this because we need good things.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wanted to post this hours ago but have had A Day, so thank you for your patience! Thanks also to everyone for their kind words and kudos. Does this needy writer wench a world of good.
> 
> This chapters features a smutty line that my beta and I both laughed hysterically at and which I was tempted to take out because it's RIDICULOUS but hey if not in fic then where??? So enjoy.

He meets Hugh next in an open-air market somewhere in... east Asia, he thinks, based on what he can see of the architecture and the trees. He doesn’t know if this game is filling him up with experiences he’s never had or just deepening the want. 

Speaking of which, Hugh touches his elbow, drawing him away from the chayotes. Though the market’s patrons and proprietors don’t exist in this game, their produce does, like he and Hugh could act out a storefront fantasy if they wanted. (He wonders how it would feel to visit the Apothecary in here; he hasn’t dared.) 

“Hey,” Patrick grins, then hesitates, but Hugh saves him with a kiss at the corner of his mouth. “Where do you think we are?” 

“Indonesia,” Hugh says, like it’s obvious, and Patrick wonders again who he is, out there. He could be an international businessman, a travel journalist, a diplomat - okay, probably not a diplomat, based on the little Patrick knows of him. He could even be from Indonesia himself; the magic (technology) of the game obscures players’ voices and appearances and even translates speech to another language, if players want, so they could be anything. Patrick makes a mental note to check the time difference to Indonesia later. “Did you have a good day?” 

It’s so pedestrian, so much something he’d ask a friend or a coworker or a neighbor, that Patrick smiles. “It was okay. It kind of dragged on, you know. I, uh, I was hoping-’’

“Regrets?” Hugh interrupts him, his face - which has hints of Leonardo DiCaprio about it today, if Patrick’s not mistaken - scrunching up, bracing. 

“What? No! No regrets,” Patrick assures him quickly. He doesn’t know how Hugh could think that; he’d thought his exclamations of praise and disbelief had been pretty clear yesterday. Unless- “Do - do _you_ have regrets? About-” 

“Um.” The way Hugh freezes, Patrick assumes he’s hit the mark. “Oh. I. Hmm. I don’t know if anyone’s ever asked me that before, I’m realizing, and that’s-” 

There are a few ways to interpret that, but Patrick doesn’t like any of them. He thinks about calling Hugh _desperate_ yesterday and wishes he could find _himself_ in this game and challenge _himself_ to hand-to-hand combat. “It’s okay if you regret it, any part of it,” he makes himself say. 

"Is it okay if I liked it?” Hugh asks, the words an embarrassed tumble. “All of it?” 

“Yeah,” Patrick breathes. He knows he’s not hiding his relief at all. “Me too.”

“Oh good,” Hugh murmurs, though Patrick wants to find a new word for the way Hugh smiles when he murmurs, so that it’s more smiling than speaking. 

This time Hugh’s kiss lands squarely on Patrick’s mouth, and Patrick’s lips are so, so grateful. He smoothes a hand over Hugh’s middle-back and savors the feeling of wanting more and finally feeling he can have it. He remembers the rush of past crushes, the driving adrenaline of possibility, but it’s nothing like this, like tipping over the edge of doubt and flirtation and hope and finding a brand new game map of fulfilled desire. 

“Come on, I want to show you something,” Hugh says, sliding his hand down Patrick’s forearm to his palm. 

To cover the realization that this is the first time he’s ever held hands with a man - well, more to cover the realization of _just how much he likes it_ \- Patrick teases, “Is it your top five erogenous zones? Because we covered that yesterday. Not that I’m opposed to a review session.” 

“Carlo’s got a teacher kink, got it,” Hugh winks. 

Patrick takes too long to remember who Carlo is, and the disappointment when he does is stupid. He’d been the one to suggest fake names. They’re total strangers. It’s fine; it doesn’t make what they’re doing any less real, as far as having sex in a game is real. 

Hugh takes them to a town somewhere in the western reaches of North America; Patrick couldn’t say if it’s the American Pacific Northwest or British Columbia, but it’s more familiar than their previous few excursions. Maybe Hugh is from Vancouver? Patrick needs to stop guessing. 

They sit on a hillside above a small coastal town and watch a swoop of swifts murmurate across the dusk-pink sky before descending like dive-bombers into the chimney of a church.

“How did you know they were here?” Patrick asks in awe. 

Hugh, now stretched on the grass to look up at the sky, shrugs, the merest twitch that moves his whole, compelling body. “It was probably in an Atlas Obscura article or something. I used to have friends who would _only_ visit those kinds of things. Everything else was ‘like, _way_ normie’.”

Patrick has gotten the impression that Hugh sometimes has the same opinions that he’s now mocking, but he doesn’t point that out; he’ll let him hold that complexity. 

He leans over Hugh, a hand on the cool grass next to his shoulder, and kisses him, slow and deep like he’s wanted to all day. 

He’s trying to think of a way to ask for a gentle introduction to, oh, maybe a light rimming or a casual 69, but somehow he lands on “Can we have sex again?” 

Hugh laughs, his shoulders lifting off the ground with it.

Patrick groans and buries his burning face in Hugh’s neck. “I’m sorry. That was the opposite of smooth. Apparently, I’m a teenager.” He feels Hugh still. “I’m not _actually_ a teenager. I meant, like, in terms of suaveness. I have a retirement plan and everything.” 

“Gross.” Something that feels suspiciously like a kiss brushes Patrick's hair, but by the time he pushes himself back up to sitting, Hugh’s head is back on the ground, his eyes back on the sky. “It’s okay, by the way. About the suaveness. Honesty is underrated.” 

“Hmm. Now I know _you’re_ not a teenager.” He waits for Hugh to roll his head to the side on the grass to look at him. “No teenager _I’ve_ ever met would prioritize honesty over cool.” 

“I am...” Hugh prevaricates, and Patrick cups his cheek, thumbs his earlobe as he does. “I am twice the age of some teenagers,” he says finally, carefully. 

“Not getting anything more specific than that, huh?” That’s still a pretty wide range, and Patrick sits right in the middle of it. He’s not sure why he cares; it’s not like he and Hugh are pursuing an actual relationship. They haven’t talked about it, but given the circumstances- “What about this,” he says, with more confidence than he feels. “What if I ... blow you, and you can’t come until you’ve said _oh my god_ the same number of times as you are years old?” 

“But you don’t know how old I am and wouldn’t know when to stop,” Hugh points out. 

“Correct. So you’d have to relent and tell me, at some point.” 

“You are _very_ confident in your edging abilities.” But Patrick’s hand is on his chest, and he can feel how Hugh’s heart and breathing have picked up. 

“Hey, if you really think you can hold out longer than I can...” Patrick shrugs. He can’t believe he gets to have this, gets to be _competitive_ about _blow jobs._

“Alright, alright, you better be prepared to back up that ego of yours,” Hugh tuts, undoing the tie on his trousers. 

“How do you want to - where do you-” 

They haven’t talked about Patrick being new at this, but Hugh _must_ be able to tell, right? Though he’s sure there are people who can have sex for years and not be very good at it. And he doesn’t think there are that many options in terms of positions, when it comes to giving a blow job, though who knows; that didn’t exactly show up in the ‘welcome to being gay’ manual. Fuck, he wishes there were a manual. He hates being underprepared. He doesn’t hate it enough to not do this right now, because he wants to suck a dick more than he wants to save face, but, yeah, he wishes he’d been able to do more than watch some porn and roughly emulate the act on a dildo. 

“Um-” Hugh glances around. “I don’t want to lay with my head downhill, because I do not know enough about anatomy to be sure I wouldn’t get, like, an embolism from that? And I assume I still need blood to, you know-” He gestures at his cock, which, oh god, has just emerged from his underwear as Hugh shimmies them off. Patrick’s never been this close to one that’s not attached to his own body, and it’s definitely confirming a few things for him. 

“Why don’t you-” They shuffle around a bit so Patrick’s downhill, on his belly in the grass between Hugh’s legs. It smells a bit like fresh-cut lawn and he can almost imagine they’re hooking up behind the baseball field on a summer night. He supposes they _could_ , in here. They could have sex on the pitcher’s mound at fucking Yankee Stadium. 

Hugh props one leg up and interlaces his fingers behind his head, as if he’s just going cloud-gazing. “Whenever you’re ready.” 

“You’re a cocky bastard,” Patrick chuckles, nipping at the hairy underside of Hugh’s thigh. It’s hard to feel nervous about this when Hugh’s just...here, teasing him, goading him, letting him set the pace. 

“And you’re procrastinating.” 

Patrick pinches Hugh’s bare hip and uses his other hand to gently lift Hugh’s cock away from his stomach, testing its weight, tilting it towards his mouth. He doesn’t miss the way Hugh’s abdomen clenches, the way he shifts slightly. 

“Want to forfeit now?” he asks, blowing gently up and down Hugh’s length . He’s pretty sure he’s doing everything wrong, but he’s not going to rush what will surely be a transcendent experience. Hugh thrusts upward so that his cock just brushes Patrick’s lips; Patrick sputters and laughs. “Okay, okay. Behave please.” 

“This _is_ me behaving,” Hugh mutters, but he presses both hands to the grass. 

Patrick leans over so he doesn’t have to bend Hugh’s cock that far, taking it at an angle. He nearly groans as he takes the first inch or two into his mouth - actually, yeah, he did just groan, based on Hugh’s laugh. “‘S good!” Patrick protests around a mouthful of dick, and Hugh swats at him. 

“Teeth!” 

“Sowwy,” Patrick mumbles, tucking his lips over his teeth, and then he takes in another inch and closes his lips around the hot shaft and _sucks_ , and suddenly things don’t seem as funny. 

Hugh’s fingers are twisting the grass, and Patrick pulls up a bit to suckle the tip and let some saliva slick the length before bobbing back down, exploring Hugh’s ridges and folds and long, smooth, hard stretch with his tongue. Fuck the competition, fuck the plan to make Hugh reveal his age, Patrick will stay here for an hour - all night - if Hugh lets him. 

“Oh my god,” he breathes when he pulls off for a moment, cradling Hugh’s messy cock with one hand as he crawls up to kiss Hugh, out of gratitude or pure lust. He swears he can feel Hugh’s pulse in his length. “I’m glad your head is uphill.” 

Hugh’s answering snort is cut off as Patrick slides back down and goes as deep as he can, trying to find a happy medium between depth and pace. Both of Hugh’s legs are up now, nothing relaxed in his posture, his knees brushing Patrick’s ears and his hands petting his head. It’s not unlike when he’d go down on Rachel, he thinks; just as then, he’s figuring out how to adjust based on his partner’s response. It’s obviously entirely different because he himself is so hard he’s wondering how uncomfortable it would be to just rut against the grass, and _that_ certainly never happened when eating Rachel out. 

“Oh _god_ ,” Hugh groans, and some shitty, class clown part of Patrick pulls him off once again. 

“How many was that?” he asks, panting, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. “I’m going for 40 unless you say otherwise.” 

“You’re a horrible person,” Hugh moans, and Patrick could claim it’s a desire to disprove this, or pity for Hugh’s writhing, that makes him buckle, but he’s really just far more invested in making Hugh come than in winning this game. 

On instinct, he starts sliding the fingertips of his free hand from the base of Hugh’s cock over his balls and his perineum til he just brushes his ass, then back up, and a few moments later Hugh is gasping his name - gasping _Carlo_ \- and squeezing his eyes shut and coming down Patrick’s throat. 

He wonders if he’ll remember the taste when he exits the game later. 

  
  
  
  


In the next two or three weeks, they have sex in a dozen beautiful places: in the gently lapping tides of a tropical island, on a blanket in the Serengeti, in a ridiculously lush chamber in a palace surrounded by stretches of sand dunes, and yeah, once in the locker room at Rogers Centre, which Hugh only mocks a little bit. 

“Just so you know,” Hugh pants, the first time Patrick tops, “I wouldn’t normally be down for this, you know, out there.” 

Patrick stops thrusting; he’s been so eager for this, to try penetration like this - has he pushed Hugh into something he doesn’t want? “Um-”

Hugh gestures to the dappled forest clearing they’re fucking in. “The _bugs_ , can you imagine? No amount of properly-laid drop cloths or rustic, cottagecore beds would suffice. But here-” 

He grips the back of Patrick’s neck and kisses him, searingly, and then he’s got both of Patrick’s hands pinned to the ground, he’s - he’s fucking himself on Patrick’s cock and Patrick might have to start journaling because he cannot tell anyone about this but nothing this amazing has happened to him in his _entire life_. 

They don’t meet every night, and they don’t _only_ have sex; Hugh starts reading _Captain Correlli’s Mandolin_ and complains about there being too much focus on fishing and old men until he doesn’t, until Patrick asks how he’s liking it and Hugh just kind of hums and says the writing is beautiful and kisses Patrick. 

Patrick tries not to think about what Hugh is doing on the nights they don’t see each other. It’s none of his business. 

In their nights together, Patrick discovers there are are more possibilities in the way of sex than he had ever imagine. If he’d thought he felt fifteen again when he’d been excited for the game to come out, it’s _nothing_ compared to the pubescent excitement and confusion and desperation he feels about learning and trying everything with Hugh. Like, face riding? He hadn’t known how that would work with another guy, hadn’t really let himself consider it, but there are so many configurations and he wants to try them _all_ , to be the rider and the rode, the licker and the licked. 

But Patrick actually maybe most enjoys, of all things, Hugh’s _handjobs --_ more than he thinks he should admit. Hugh has reminded him that there’s no checklist, and that even if there _were_ a checklist, it would be perfectly okay to run through the whole thing and decide that he doesn’t like some of the items on said checklist and decide that he really likes others, like handjobs for example, and only do those. 

“It’s just so basic,” he whines, in the middle of one of these handjobs. He’s pressed up against a tree (“ _I’m_ certainly not going to be the one to expose my skin to _bark_ ,” Hugh had protested), leg crooked around Hugh’s hip, so it’s hardly _basic,_ but still. 

“It’s a classic for a reason,” Hugh hums. His breath is hot on Patrick’s bare chest, which isn’t helping. 

“You’re just so _good_ at it,” he complains, which is ridiculous; he wouldn’t complain if the Leafs won every game for the rest of eternity, would he? 

Hugh grins and nips the underside of Patrick’s arm. It’s teeth and then stubble and then a soothing slick of tongue and Patrick’s entire body is an erogenous zone at this point, as far as he’s concerned. “I’ll admit, it is _very_ flattering having sex with you.” 

“Like you need flattery,” Patrick snorts, hoping his fingernails, digging into Hugh’s back as he gets jacked off, aren’t giving away more than he’s already given away. “Why?” 

“Hmm. You just seem...so grateful.” 

“Oh my _god_ , you’re so fucking arrogant,” Patrick groans. 

“Yeah?” Hugh hums, doing that twist with his hand that always makes Patrick go from zero to _my brains are about to come out by way of my dick_ in no time. 

“So arrogant,” Patrick repeats, but he’s kissing Hugh because apparently he has a thing for guys who are annoyingly aware that they’re hot and talented and creative and opinionated and terrible at spreadsheets, and okay this clearly isn't entirely about Hugh but he can't be expected to get over David just because he's had a couple weeks of great sex with someone else. 

“I’m serious, though,” Hugh says, a bit later, as they wait out the basically-nonexistent in-game refractory period on a waterbed. “You’re so ... responsive, and vocal, like every little touch means something to you.”

Patrick blushes. He’s sprawled out totally nude and he’d thought he passed the point of blushing, but apparently not. “I, uh, I haven’t necessarily had a lot of great sex in my life. It hasn’t all been _bad_ , but ... nothing like this.” 

“Like I said.” Hugh’s grin is crooked and devilish and everything out of a classic romance novel, where Patrick is the ingenue being debauched. “Grateful and responsive.” 

Patrick tries to pay more attention to his own responses as Hugh goes back to work, which is admittedly very difficult because Hugh is _very_ dedicated. 

“Okay, stop that,” Hugh huffs a moment later, his hand disappearing entirely from Patrick’s cock, which, _no_. 

“Stop what?” Patrick reaches for Hugh’s wrist, and when this is held out of his reach he settles for a very pleasant shoulder instead. 

“You’re getting up in your head. You know it’s not a _bad_ thing to be responsive? Like, I for one find it _extremely_ sexy.” 

Patrick groans, not in a sexy way, and drops his head back against the bouncy waterbed plastic. “I didn’t realize I was coming here for therapy,” he snipes, and regrets it immediately, bitter guilt to accompany the shame that was already sitting hot in his cheeks. “Sorry. I just... It’s embarrassing, isn’t it? How obviously out of control I am?” 

“Uh, tell me again how _out of control_ I make you, and ask me how I feel about it,” Hugh murmurs huskily, tilting his pelvis towards Patrick’s. “If something is working for you, there’s no shame in enjoying it. Within limits,” he adds hastily, squeezing his eyes shut; “like, you would _not_ believe what some people think is acceptable. There’s a kink, and then there’s... _no_.” 

“But that’s just it,” Patrick says, latching onto the word _kink_ and the soothing smoothness of Hugh’s skin. “It’s a handjob, and I’m a shuddering, pathetic-” Hugh gives him a look so he drops the self-loathing and gets to the point. “It’s like the most vanilla thing there is.” 

“Mmkay,” Hugh hums, and Patrick both thinks he should think himself into a pair of pants so he can tuck away his wilting dick for this conversation and also thinks he might need to be this close, this vulnerable, to have it. “Vanilla is a _highly_ underrated flavor. Vanilla is _delicious_. As I said, it’s a classic for a reason. And vanilla done well? Give me that over some - Brooklyn hipster toothpaste gelato.” 

“Are the hipsters making the toothpaste or the gelato?”

“You, shh. I’m doing sage older queer person advice time now and you’re going to listen. It’s _worlds_ better to like what you’re doing than to push yourself to do something you don’t like.” 

“What if I don’t know what I like?” Patrick settles his hands on Hugh’s lower back, holding on, holding him near. “And what if me figuring that out is holding back from your...things you like? Your kinks?” 

Hugh flutters a hand like it’s a non-issue, which it can’t possibly be for someone as... well-traveled as he is. He could be having so much better than Patrick. “Believe it or not, none of my kinks involve my partner being uncomfortable? Also, and I wouldn’t really know, never having had a long-term partner, but my understanding is that sometimes knowing and trusting the person you’re having sex with can help... make space for exploration.” 

Patrick closes his eyes against a sudden burn, a sudden pressure in his throat. A gentle hand soothes up his leg and over his stomach, bringing with it a thin blanket that wasn’t there a moment ago. 

“You are very generous,” he says hoarsely, when he’s able to speak without crying. 

“Now that’s something I’ve never been accused of being.” 

Patrick whispers, “I have a hard time believing that,” and kisses him sweetly. “And you _have_ made space for me. I know we’re not... partners, or whatever. I know this is what it is. But I... I never knew that this space was something I needed.” 

“Mm.” Hugh’s face is warm and sad at once; no amount of Patrick telling himself _it’s a computer simulation’s approximation of a human face_ does anything to make it less beautiful. “I know a thing or two about twisting yourself to fit for other people. Sometimes literally, but. We’re talking about you right now.” 

“Okay,” Patrick chuckles, feeling less touchy about kinks than he did a moment ago. “I just... I so appreciate that you make that space for me, but I never...I don’t want,” he continues carefully, “for you to ever make yourself feel small in order to make space for me.” 

He could only describe what happens on Hugh’s face as a blossoming, even as he scoots down the bed a bit so that he can prop his chin on Patrick’s shoulder. “You,” Hugh whispers, “make me feel _anything_ but small.”

And Patrick thinks that if they were to leave the game that night and never see each other again, he would still carry the pride of hearing that, _you make me feel anything but small_ , for the rest of his life. 

  
  
  
  


Patrick keeps thinking about space the next few days, and on Monday, when they regularly close early for a half day, he finds he keeps glancing at David. Not that that’s anything new; the more he hooks up with Hugh, the more he finds his crush for David evolving. It’s like the edge has been taken off, so he’s not as frantic as he’d been (jerking off in the store bathroom had not been his proudest moment), but it’s still hot and deep and fierce and ... patient, somehow. And now he’s thinking about space, and how much space David has created for him. With the business, certainly, but in a dozen other ways, ways he doesn’t think David’s even aware of. 

“Do you want to get lunch?” he asks, when they’ve swept and rung out and stored the produce for the long overnight. “Twyla said something about horseradish squid chowder.” 

“Yum,” David trills, his face belying the sarcasm of his enthusiastic tone. “I didn’t realize you had _time_ , for lunches, and things.” 

Patrick chuckles and leans back against the display table. “I happen to make time for lunches and breakfasts and dinners every single day, David.” 

“Good for you. Nutrition.” He’s still not meeting Patrick’s eyes. “I just mean, you seem so _busy_ lately. You’re always in a rush to get out of here.” 

“Aw, David,” Patrick says, over the miserable, guilty way his gut is clenching, the bit of panic rising in his chest. David’s right; he’s been with Hugh almost every night, has thought of little else lately. “Is this your way of saying you’ve _missed_ me? We’re working side by side every day and you’ve _missed_ me?”

“No!” David protests, far too quickly, and his face does a magnificent twitch through a reflexive smile, a grimace, another poorly-pressed-down smile. “No. I just - it would be - bad for business, if my business partner drowned in online gambling debt or got catfished by a mob boss or got so obsessed with grooming tiny virtual bonsai trees that he forgot to eat or drink and was found dead in his apartment a week later!” 

“You’d wait a whole _week_ to check on me?” 

“I-” David points a pen defensively at Patrick, then sets his hands on his hips. “I would send concerned messages after the second or third day, but I’d respect your privacy, and _that_ would be your downfall. That and the cute little pixelated bonsais.” 

“I’m touched,” Patrick says drily. He wants to keep up this momentum, ask David something like _what do you bon-say we go get lunch now_ , but he feels like he owes David something more. Or maybe that David deserves something more. It’s a slim distinction, but he feels it. “I... you’re not wrong, though. I know I haven’t been around.” 

David sniffs, his eyebrows quirking with indignant, righteous satisfaction. 

“I think,” Patrick goes on, crossing the small cavern between the display table and the register, where he leans his hip against the counter so that he’s near David but doesn’t have to look at him head-on, “I hoped I could use _Striking Vipers_ to reconnect with friends, friends from...before, and use that as a first step to get back into talking to people I’ve...” David is watching him like he watches a vendor explain a new product idea; it’s both unnerving and helpful. “I’ve fallen out of touch with a lot of people. Friends and family. My parents included,” he admits, and it’s one thing to know a truth and another to voice it to your colleague-slash-crush, and his lungs feel like they want to collapse in the vacuum the expulsion of this truth has created. “So I thought, connect casually with old friends in the game, and I could work my way back into talking with them. But I’ve ended up using it as a... an avoidance tactic.” Here he turns, his hands on the edge of the counter, his gaze on David’s chin, safer than his eyes or his mouth. “I’m sorry if that affected you as well. I’d like to think we’re friends, and I - apparently sometimes I avoid the good things in my life.” 

He expects David to tease him about calling him a _good thing in my life_ , but his expression is nearly unreadable, and certainly not teasing. 

“Um. Thank you,” David says carefully, “for telling me that. Do you - hmm. Do you want to talk about it? The ...stuff? With your friends? Or your parents?” 

_I’m not sure there are words for it, after all this time_. “Maybe not over squid chowder at the cafe,” he jokes. “But. Yeah, maybe someday.” He finds he means it. Here is David, creating space for him again. Space to spill his messy anguish, his fucked-up choices, his wasted relationships. “Thank you.” 

“Of course. Friends, right?” David shrugs, voice falsely nonchalant, tone like guys from college who used to say _girls, right?_ and clap Patrick on the shoulder. 

Patrick just nods, throat tight. He can’t remember why it was so hard to look at David a moment ago; now his gaze, his whole being, feels magnetically fixated to David.

“Um, I would still be interested in lunch, though,” David adds delicately, tugging his bag out from under the counter. “We can talk about literally anything else - have I told you the story of how Alexis cut one of Mom’s wigs for a Halloween costume and then tried to find a replacement that she could afford on her weekly allowance? She was _seven_ , poor thing...” 

David sweeps them out the door and Patrick feels he’s been forgiven. But he doesn’t want to keep doing things that require people to forgive.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [](https://ibb.co/2YwXL1X)  
> 


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this chapter's vibe is, hopefully, equal parts "they never said they were bright you guys, just really fucking pretty" and "fond/teary/pleading emoji"

“Your novel is getting so depressing!” Hugh whines, one night in a hammam spa in a Turkish resort. 

(Patrick’s not clear on how the spa, or the resort, functions without staff, but he’s mostly learned to turn off his logical-reasoning-questioning brain in the game. He’s certainly gotten used to being able to go six rounds with Hugh with no lube, which is about as mythical as he can imagine.) 

“ _ My _ novel? I wasn’t aware I’d written anything. How were the reviews?” 

Hugh smacks his bare, sweat-sheened chest. “Your mandolin novel. You told me it was a love story but I’m sensing imminent tragedy.” 

Patrick combs his fingers through Hugh’s hair. “It’s worth it, trust me.” 

“Trust you,” Hugh grumbles, but he settles back in at Patrick’s side. “Also, don’t think I don’t see right through why you chose the name  _ Carlo _ . Who’s your Francesco, then?” 

“Oh, I don’t-” Just as Patrick’s been getting better at accepting the surreality of aspects of the game, he thinks he’s been nurturing a healthy division between Hugh and David, between what he has (and likes, a lot) and what he still wants. 

But Hugh’s question roils in his gut. He’s wondered if this is some kind of cheating. He can’t cheat on someone he’s not dating, obviously, but he’s having sex with Hugh while he’s still clearly in love with David, but he also really wants to keep having sex with Hugh, and is it stringing them along if he keeps having sex with him while still having feelings for David? Can he cheat on two people when he’s dating neither of them and one of them really only exists in a video game projection in his mind? 

He despises himself for being so besotted of a man who doesn’t want him; he despises himself for being so tangled in a virtual sexual relationship that he’s not pursuing anything in the real world; he despises himself for feeling like he’s cheating on both of them. He also despises himself for despising himself for all this, because of course he does. 

“It’s not like that,” he finally says. 

“Mhm.” 

“There’s... Yeah, there’s a guy I like, but it’s not...we’re friends.” And then, because he despises himself, he adds, “You remind me of him, actually, sometimes.” 

“Hmm.” Hugh snorts and nuzzles into Patrick’s side. “Well, in that case I’m sorry.” 

“He’d probably say that too. But it’s... it’s good. I like liking him. It’s... it sucks, knowing he doesn’t feel the same way, but it’s still good, somehow.” 

Hugh’s quiet so long that Patrick finally looks down at him, his hair-of-the-day springy and curly in the steam, his nude body lithe and relaxed and shining with sweat. “Obviously I don’t know what you’re like out there, what you look like, what you do,” Hugh says eventually. His hand pets up and down Patrick’s ribcage, though it’s unclear whom the comforting gesture is for. “But I get the impression he’d be lucky to have you. And if not him, then someone else, soon.” 

_ I don’t want someone other than David _ , he thinks, but he can’t say that to Hugh, who probably already feels like a second choice, even though he’s the one laying here with Patrick. “I’m sorry, we don’t have to - I know it’s weird, because you and I-”

“It’s fine,” Hugh assures him. “There always ends up being at least three people in my relationships. Not that this is - that. A relationship. I know it’s...anyway, it’s fine.” 

It’s clearly anything but fine, but for all the intimacy of the last month, this is a line they don’t cross. So Patrick sits with the sour feeling, blinking into the steam until the humidity and the solidity of Hugh pressed against him lull him to sleep. 

  
  
  
  


He wakes with a jerk, back protesting as he sits upright and only just catches himself on the coffee table before he can go tumbling off the couch.  _ Fuck _ . He must’ve fallen asleep in the game and spent the whole night on the couch. 

The whole night?!

He stands so quickly his foot gets tangled in the area rug and he sprawls back across the arm of the couch. From here he can see the clock on the stove, and  _ fuck _ , the store should’ve been opened twenty minutes ago, and he knows how David feels about mornings. 

He changes frantically - he can’t show up wearing yesterday’s clothes; he already feels like he’s hiding a sordid affair and David only pays attention to certain things, like a customer’s skin type or Patrick’s nail beds or, unfortunately, what people are wearing. His face and hair are probably greasy, but he can wash up in the store bathroom once David sashays in at what he considers a ‘ _ human _ hour’. 

His only remaining concession to his normal morning routine is a stop at the cafe for a tea and an egg sandwich, because his morning breath is turning even him off and his stomach feels like a swamp monster that will only be appeased by breakfast. He taps his phone, which had died during the night, anxiously against the front counter as he waits for Twyla to prepare his order. 

“There you go!” she announces cheerily, what feels like a month later. As she hands over the cup and bag, she points to her temple. “You’ve got something, just there.” 

He’d forgotten to take the game console off in his rush. “Oh, thanks, Twyla. I was playing  _ Striking Vipers _ last night again. That’s why I overslept, actually,” he admits. 

“I’ve heard that game is great!” Patrick would bet Twyla would say that even if she’d neither seen nor heard a single review of the game. “Have you been playing with David?” 

Patrick laughs, turning to go. “No, David definitely isn’t into this kind of thing.” 

“Oh, really?” Twyla frowns. “I gave Stevie my cousin’s ex’s copy of the game and Stevie said she’d given it to David and that she barely sees him anymore because he’s constantly playing it in that spare room at the motel.” 

Patrick nearly drops his tea. “ _ What _ ?” 

“Yeah, I guess he tried playing in his room but Alexis kept interrupting him, which apparently gives you, like, brain whiplash, or something? So.” 

She shrugs, smiles, and goes to take someone else’s order, completely oblivious to the fact that she’s managed to give Patrick a stroke and a partial hard-on all at once, which is impressive, considering Patrick is not sexually attracted to women. 

No, what’s really currently blowing his  _ fucking _ mind as he stumbles out of Cafe Tropical and across the street is that if he hadn’t run into Hugh, that second night, he might’ve run into David instead. They could’ve met accidentally, not recognized each other, and been having sex. Crazy, hot, once-in-a-lifetime sex. 

Memories of sex with Hugh are merging with Patrick’s fantasies of kissing David (going down on David, eating David out, fucking David, being fucked by David...) and he’s going to have to put off opening the store for ten more minutes so he can go jerk off in the bathroom. Five minutes. Three. The mental images are  _ very _ compelling. 

He’s opened the door to the store and taken two steps towards the back before he realizes he hadn’t had to unlock the door. 

“Morning!” David calls from the far corner, where he’s reaching up to restock something on a top shelf. 

This time Patrick  _ does _ drop something, though fortunately it’s the well-wrapped sandwich and not the tea. 

“H-hi,” he says, making sure the table is between his crotch and David’s eyeline. “What are you- it’s 9:45?” 

“Okay, judging by your tardiness today, I’d assumed you hadn’t yet learned to tell time, so I am  _ very _ impressed,” David smirks. 

“Most clocks are digital these days,” Patrick responds, which is admittedly not a point worth making, but there’s not a lot of blood in his head at the moment and it’s been a very weird morning. “I just - I didn’t expect you to be here.” 

David shrugs, glancing down and picking up the cleanser bottle nearest him. “Ronnie called me when she didn’t see you come into the cafe for breakfast. I guess normally your schedules overlap? And I know you’ve been dealing with a lot, so. I figured I’d open and you could come in when you were ready.” 

He shrugs again, like it’s nothing, though Patrick can picture him swearing and throwing his phone and then having to swear at Alexis for complaining that he’s woken her up. He probably abbreviated the skincare routine he loves to explain to Patrick every time Patrick mentions using bar soap, just to get him riled up. 

“I’m sorry, David,” he sighs. The guilt of not being busy, not having any legitimate excuse for having inconvenienced David, is doing wonders for deflating his dick, so he finally emerges out from behind the table and stands as close to David as he dares, which isn’t that close, at this point. “You shouldn’t have had to do that. It was irresponsible of me and I - I wish I could make it up to you.” 

“Okay, one, you’re the most responsible person I’ve ever met. It’s scary,” David says, eyes dramatically wide, though he taps the table between them with his palm, like he’d reach out to touch Patrick if they weren’t colleagues. “This is the first time I’ve seen you be less than 100% put together since we opened. I’m mostly relieved to know you’re a real person and not a robot. And don’t you fucking dare do The Robot right now,” he warns quickly, which - fair. Patrick had been about to go there. “Also, it’s not - to do something like this for you-” He looks at a spot above Patrick’s head, lips pursed. “It’s easy,” he finishes softly. “To do something like this for you.” 

“Thank you, David,” Patrick murmurs. 

David waves his hands, as if to dispel the mood that’s descended. “It’s nothing.” 

“It’s not nothing, so thank you,” he repeats. “I’m gonna-” He gestures towards the stockroom with his tea. 

“You can ignore the messages I sent you - I was just concerned about - about the bonsai obsession and your imminent spiral into death-by-solitude!” David calls after him. 

Sure enough, when he’s plugged in his phone and turned it back on, there are no fewer than fifteen texts from David, ranging from  _ hey is everything okay  _ to  _ PATRICK BREWER ANSWER YOUR FUCKING PHONE  _ to  _ omg i’m like two minutes away from calling the police i can’t run this store on my own please don’t be dead patrick _ . 

“I’m hoping you didn’t call the police?” he asks, pushing aside the curtain. 

David turns from the register. “Mm, no. Fortunately Twyla had popped over for some candles and she talked me down from that particular spiral.” 

“Hey, that reminds me,” Patrick grins. “Why was  _ Twyla _ the one to tell me that you’ve been playing  _ Striking Vipers _ ?” 

David’s elbow slips from its casual, jaunty lean against the counter. “ _ What _ ? How the  _ fuck _ does she know that? This town is too fucking small.” 

Patrick laughs, emboldened by David’s panic to glide a hand over his arm as he passes back into the front room. “So it’s true?” 

“Ugh. Yes! Fine! It’s true!” His hands are in the air, like a pair of rare, flashy birds. “I played the stupid game. A couple times. It’s whatever.” 

“Uh, more than a couple times, if Twyla’s gossip is accurate.” Patrick sips his tea to hide his grin. “It’s okay to admit that you like it, David.” 

“No, it’s  _ not _ okay,” David snaps, “it’s  _ embarrassing _ , and  _ very  _ off-brand. That’s why I didn’t tell you.” He inspects his cuticles, as if they’re ever anything but immaculate. Patrick has never seen such immaculate cuticles. 

“I get it, I get it,” Patrick nods seriously. “It could really damage the image you’ve built as town pacifist, if it got out that you’re punching strangers in a video game-” 

“Okay,  _ no _ ,” and David’s pointing at him again, like a threat and a correction all at once and Patrick wants to bite that finger, wants to provoke David forever. “I have not been fighting. As you noted, the game has a...surprising range of versatile utilities. I can visit Japan again, for example. I haven’t been able to do that since...” 

He gestures behind him. Patrick’s not sure he’s ever heard one of the Roses say  _ since we lost our money  _ or  _ when we lost everything _ or anything else quite so ... direct, about their situation, their history. And now he’s made David think about it. Not that it’s an easy thing to forget, he imagines. 

“Japan,” he echoes. “I’ve heard it’s beautiful.” 

“Mhm, it is, but I can tell you’re pitying me and I will not be pitied for not being able to travel by someone who’s probably never left Ontario.” 

“Hey!” Patrick protests. “I went to Regina once.”

“We’ve all been to Regina once,” David mutters, and Patrick’s fairly sure that’s an innuendo, but their first customer of the morning (since Patrick’s been here, at least) comes in, and the day begins.

  
  
  


David comes back from his lunch break that day and drapes himself over the corner of the counter, biting down a smile like he knows he’s being extra cute. Patrick can’t imagine how he’d survive if this kind of attention were levied on him regularly, on purpose, with intent - he’d love to test the limits of his endurance, though.

“Hi,” David practically purrs. 

Patrick pinches his leg behind the counter to make sure he’s not dreaming. “Hi?”

“So you know how you said something earlier about making this morning up to me-”

“Ah, so there  _ is _ a catch!” Patrick chuckles, putting down his pen and spreading both palms on the wood. 

“Not a catch,” David corrects him sternly. “An exchange of gestures between friends. Alexis is making me join her at the Wobbly Elm tonight, since she’s still trying to get over her tragic crush on Ted, and I know she’ll be flirting with everyone there and leaving me to drown at the bar, so-”

Patrick smiles, relaxing his stance. “You’re a good brother, David.” 

“Alright, if you keep mocking me I’ll uninvite you.”

Patrick hesitates. He and Hugh don’t have firm plans to meet up tonight, but he’s gotten so used to expecting that that’s where his evenings will end up. All the more reason to check back in on his real life, honestly. “You know what, yeah,” he says, before he can reconsider. “I actually had some plans kind of fall through, so drinks would be great.” 

“Oh.” David perches the back of his wrist on his hip. “I mean, if you - if you already have plans, that’s-” 

“No plans. What time?” 

  
  
  


Stevie ends up joining them at the Wobbly Elm, because of course she does. Patrick’s starting to find it amusing, the way she keeps showing up. Not that this is a date, unless David’s in the habit of bringing his sister on dates. Very much  _ not  _ a date. Really, he’s grateful that Stevie’s always around. It helps keep him from entertaining stupid fantasies, like David liking him back. 

They settle at a table in the back of the bar. Patrick’s spared having to ask if they do this often by their obvious distaste; Stevie’s the only one who doesn’t seem to have hygienic qualms about touching the sticky tabletop, and the drinks, while cheap, taste like they’ve all been laced with windshield cleaner. 

David sucks his teeth bracingly after a sip of his bright orange cocktail. “Remind me why we can’t be having this sob session in Stevie’s apartment with a bottle of something that’s actually been approved for human consumption?” 

Alexis smacks his arm. “David! How will any of us ever meet people if we’re only ever in, like, the motel and the store?” 

“Excuse you, I go to the cafe  _ every _ day. I’ve never met someone there, but.” David quirks his eyebrows at Patrick over his drink. “I could.” 

Stevie, sitting next to Patrick in the booth, kicks his ankle. He quickly stops looking at David with what are surely moony eyes. 

“Speaking of which.” Alexis leans forward conspiratorially. “Stevie, come play billiards with me.” 

“I’m not doing that,” Stevie says flatly. “David already told me you’re crazy good from all your years winning your freedom or whatever.” 

“Aww, David!” Alexis coos. Patrick could get whiplash from the undulating dynamics of their relationship. “That’s so sweet. And don’t worry, Stevie, I only want to  _ play pool _ -” She punctuates each word with a fluttery double-eyed wink. “-To see if we can eavesdrop on and maybe bump into those hot little pieces by the dart board.” 

“What if  _ I _ want to bump into a hot little piece?” David demands. He cranes around to look at the men in question and harrumphs. “Okay, fine. All yours.” 

Patrick chuckles and ends up choking on his beer. Stevie conveniently chooses this moment to slide out of the booth, leaving Patrick to splutter his way back to normal breathing unassisted, as David watches him nervously. 

“Still have both lungs?” 

“Oh, I lost both of those to chain smoking years ago,” he replies solemnly, when he’s capable of speaking. 

“Tragic,” David grins. “Although I have to say they are making  _ amazing _ advances in prosthetics.” 

“Agreed, agreed. My replacement set happens to have been grown using stem cells from rare mountain goats, so.”

“Ah! That explains the obsession with hiking.” 

For a second they just grin at each other. These are the kind of moments that made him think, before David’s birthday not-a-date dinner, that something other than friendship was resonating between them. They’re still wedged in their respective corners of the booth, not having resettled in the middle after Stevie and Alexis left, and it feels more intimate than the back table at the Wobbly Elm should. 

“So,” David finally says, turning his napkin three times before setting his drink down on it. “Do you want to talk about the, you know, avoiding friends and family stuff?” 

Patrick focuses on the condensation on the neck of his beer so he won’t get swallowed up in a sudden itching panic. “Ah. Was this an ambush? To get me to finally talk to you about all my problems?”

“Hmm, no. Believe it or not, I don’t spend every waking minute trying to plot how to have deep conversations with you.” 

_ Pity _ , Patrick wants to say, but that feels just a touch too close to flirty. “Um.” He glances over to the pool table but Stevie’s taken over the game of darts and Alexis is laughing at something one of the hot little pieces has said, so there’s no rescue coming from that direction. “Sure. Why not.” 

David watches as he finishes his beer in three almost-painful gulps. “We don’t have to.” 

“I know. I... I am historically not great at talking about my feelings,” he admits. He’s holding on to his empty bottle like it’s a lifeline. 

“Well, that’s simply not true. You’re constantly telling me all your incorrect feelings about where products should go.” 

Patrick laughs, and it’s enough to ease some of the tension that’s squeezing in his chest. He knows David is making space for him yet again, and he recognizes that for the rare gift that it is. “That’s fair. This stuff, though... This feels...messy.” 

David’s face runs through a few subtle contortions. “What would I rather do on a Thursday night,” he says lightly, voice straining with sarcasm, “than listen to other people’s emotional distress? That sounds. That sounds  _ great _ , honestly, I can’t think of anywhere I’d rather be-” 

“You’re the one who offered!” Patrick laughs. 

“I contain  _ multitudes _ .” But he’s still sitting here, and from what Patrick’s seen of David and his family, or David and Stevie, or even David and the Schitts, when David cares, he shows up. “Listen,” he adds softly. “I can’t guarantee I’ll have any helpful advice to give. You probably generally don’t want to follow any suggestions from anyone in my extended family tree. But I know that sometimes it helps to just...say it? To work through it in a space other than your own twisted mind? So. I’m going to buy you another beer, and you can decide what you want to do with that.” 

Which is how Patrick ends up spilling it all onto the sticky table in front of David. How everything had gotten so tangled up in his failed relationship with Rachel but also how much had been a problem before that. How his perfectionism and need to ensure that people were happy had driven him more than any understanding of what he wanted or who he was. Resentment had settled like plaque into the arteries of every relationship: with his parents, who were trying so hard to be involved in the wedding planning and thereby made him want to talk to them less and less; with his friends, who responded to every iteration of  _ I broke up with Rachel _ with groans and reminders that it would work out in the end; with Rachel, who didn’t, not even once, make him feel unloved or unwelcome, even when he’d been a jerk, even when he’d directed his misplaced angst at her, and who’d apparently earned his resentment for that, for being what he should have needed and wanted. 

“So now I haven’t really talked to any of my friends in a meaningful capacity in... almost a year, at this point, and I was hoping the game would let me kind of ease into that, because I just don’t - I don’t know-” Patrick stops as suddenly as he’d started, his lips drawing tight, like he’s reached his quota and can’t say a word more. His chest feels raw inside, and he can’t look up from the shiny lip of his beer bottle; a single wrong glance from David might flatten him completely, and why did he think this was a good idea?! He should’ve done a practice run with Ray, who at least would’ve been unfailingly positive. 

“Mkay,” David says, and Patrick finds the courage to look at David’s wrists, if not his face. “I know I said I probably wouldn’t have advice but I  _ do _ have thoughts. I mean, did either of us honestly think I wouldn’t? Keep in mind, this is going to be a mix of years of wisdom gathered from dealing with other people’s drama and  _ years _ of therapy, so you probably should take it with a heaping spoonful of salt or maybe ignore it completely? But.” 

He straightens his napkin again. Patrick loves the gesture; he and David have wildly different organizational styles but they both, he thinks, like a sense of order and control. 

“Whatever might’ve happened between you and the people in your life in the past, all I’m hearing now is that you love them and you want them back in your life. And sure, some of the falling-out-of-touch and never talking is on you, there’s no denying that. And with Rachel and your parents, I think there’s obviously a lot of hurt and stuff to work through and-” David waves his hand. “But with your friends, at least, they could have reached out too? I very much doubt they all maliciously stopped talking to you. They probably have their own shit going on, their own...teething babies or humping puppies or midlife crises of their own.” 

He puts up a hand to stop Patrick protesting the application of  _ midlife _ . “All I’m saying is, remembering that your friends have their own lives and their own distractions might help? When you’re trying to reach out? Anyway. All you can do is try. If you had half the love in those relationships that you thought you did - and I include your relationships with Rachel and your parents in that - then they will be  _ delighted _ to hear from you.” David glances over at Stevie and Alexis and leans in conspiratorially. “You can never tell Alexis I said this, but she’s sometimes, like, scary-wise? And she told me something when I - well, the circumstances aren’t important. But she told me that people aren’t thinking about you the way you’re thinking about you. And I just...find that helpful to remember, sometimes.”

"You make it sound so easy," Patrick sighs ruefully. 

"Oh, definitely not easy," David says, and he sounds so grim that Patrick is instantly glad he's not having this conversation with Ray. He can look at David now, can feel safe in the sympathetically sour twist of his mouth. "I just know that  _ I  _ at least find comfort in remembering that I can only do what I can. I can't make someone else feel the way I want them to feel. You can't fix a broken relationship on your own. You can only try and then someone else has to step up the rest of the way.”

_ You can only try and then someone else has to step up the rest of the way _ . Patrick lets out a shuddering breath. “I think there’s another reason I’ve been avoiding reaching out to my family. I, um. Somewhere between getting engaged to Rachel and moving here I realized that I’m gay? That’s not a question. I’m gay. And that’s a good thing, a _ great _ thing. It feels really good, honestly, to know that about myself. Like a weight’s been lifted off my shoulders. I just think... I’ve also been carrying the weight of trying to anticipate how my friends and family will react to knowing. Because they don’t know.” 

This was the look Patrick’s been afraid he would receive from David: it’s all devastatingly soft and understanding and yeah, maybe that’s what Patrick needs, judging by the way that look makes him both giddy and desirous of laying down in the booth and crying. But he also hates it because he’s not someone who should  _ need _ softness and understanding. He should just be able to  _ do _ things. 

“And part of it is just, things were good with Rachel?” he finds himself adding, because David still hasn’t said anything and they’re in deep enough now. He’s not even afraid that David will want to stop being friends or business partners after this; David’s judgy as hell and yet Patrick knows, somehow, that there’s not a bit of this that David will judge. “She loved me and laughed at my jokes and cared what I thought and understood and knew me and I just always thought, gosh, what a thing to have, most people never even get this - how do I explain to everyone that I felt like something was missing?” 

“Just like that,” David murmurs. 

“And then I also feel guilty thinking any of this,” because apparently the Patrick train has left the station and poor David is just going to have to sit through the ride, “because I think Rachel would actually be really cool about it, if I could just tell her? And my parents too. And maybe I’m scared of that? That it might be easy, after all this anguish. Is that stupid?” 

David grins. “It’s dangerously close to self-sabotage, which is more  _ my  _ brand, but no, it’s not stupid.” 

“And what about queer people who don’t get supportive families? I might have one, and I’m wasting it!” 

He only realizes he’s gotten a bit panicked and a bit louder than acceptable deep-conversations-in-the-dimly-lit-bar volume when David lays a hand on his arm. 

“Okay, that is not yours to fix,” David says quietly. “At least not for now, and definitely not alone. You have enough to carry.” 

That forces a noise out of Patrick, somewhere in the overlap between a huff, a laugh, and a sob. He wipes his eyes on the sleeve of his shirt, which David winces at but kindly does not comment upon. “David, I think the Triple Sec is making you wise.” 

“Um, this is whatever the moonshine version of Triple Sec is, at  _ best _ , but yes, yes it is.” 

Patrick exhales and slumps a bit in the booth, feeling like he’s run a marathon. “Well, I obviously have more to work through than I realized.” 

David cocks his head. “You do know that you don’t have to have it all figured out in order to go on with your life, right?” 

He opens his mouth but Stevie and Alexis are back. “You guys ready to bounce? The dart guys were getting a little skeevy so we thought we’d call it a night,” Stevie says. 

David and Patrick shrug at each other and David downs the rest of his cocktail. As they slide out of the booth, Patrick asks Stevie, “Do you want me to talk to those guys, or-” 

“Oh, god, no,” all three of the others say. 

He thinks maybe he should be offended by that, but then David’s waving the soggy receipt from their table at him. “Can we write this off as a business-related team-building exercise?” 

Patrick is feeling generous - the side effect of a soulful unburdening, he supposes - so he grins and claps David on the back and announces, “You know what, David? If you can find me a part of the tax code that supports counting this as a write-off, I’ll do the paperwork.” 

David groans. 

  
  
  


Walking across the gravel parking lot to the Lincoln, the night humid and filled with cricketsong, David says quietly, “I hope we didn’t steal you away from important plans tonight.” 

“No!” Patrick replies, probably too quickly. “No, this was nice.”  _ Understatement of the decade _ . “I really like hanging out with all of you.”  _ And if you ever are interested in more than friendship I’d be interested in making a substantial investment in your heart _ . “Actually, this was the best night I’ve had for a while.” 

And he realizes it’s true. He can be anyone and go anywhere in the game, and he’d still rather be here. Even with all the amazing sex he’s been having with Hugh, even with the excitement with which he looks forward to each of their rendezvous, he thinks he’ll always choose an opportunity to spend an evening with David. He may always be hung up on David - like, truly always. And maybe that’s just because he’s a baby gay imprinting on his first crush, but he doesn’t think so - firstly because he’s pretty sure the whole first-time imprinting is a myth made up to help sleezy straight guys squirm out of romantic commitments, and secondly because in hindsight he’s been able to recognize that he’s had at least a half dozen crushes on male friends or celebrities before. 

David is different. David lingers. It feels like this crush - insufficient as the word may be - only gets deeper. 

Maybe, in the love and war novel of Patrick’s life, Hugh is the Mandras to his Pelagia - a vital but ephemeral part of his journey - but David will always be his Antonio. Even if they are never more than they are in this moment. 

It can be okay, he decides, as he slides into the back seat with Stevie. He can love David (secretly, distantly, carefully, ardently) and still move on, still let him go. He’s been trying for months, but ironically it’s tonight, baring everything for David, that makes it feel manageable. He loves David enough to want him in his life in whatever capacity possible. 

They drop Patrick off at his apartment on the way back into town. As he waves goodnight, Alexis leans across her brother to call, “Bye, Patrick! You’re such a button! David, don’t take the button for granite.” 

David flails as much as he can in the confines of the passenger seat. “Did you just say  _ granite _ ? Oh my god, you’re so fucking stupid-” 

“Good night everyone,” Patrick says loudly. He hesitates, then adds, “Good night, David. And thank you.” 

David turns from snarling at Alexis, his face transforming. He perches both hands on the open window and softly replies, “Good night, Patrick.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> me in a comment to my beta sarah: "have i made david too wise?" TOO BAD. i promise the original idea for this fic was a smutfest, but apparently we can't get away from Feelz.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> a petite little bebe of a chapter. but also 👀
> 
> No offense to people who are from Nova Scotia and/or have acne, it's David not me I promiseee

When next he sees Hugh, he kisses him hesitantly on the cheek, not sure where they stand after the awkward way they’d last ended things. 

“Hi,” Hugh murmurs, holding Patrick’s arms for a moment before he steps back. 

Should Patrick tell him that he’s accepted that the Francesco to his Carlo, the Antonio to his Pelagia, will only ever be a wish? That they could - be more, if Hugh wants it? 

“I’m sorry,” he says instead. “About-” 

“Don’t-” Hugh protests, shaking his head. “It’s not something either of us have to apologize for.” 

“Still. I know it was - I’m sorry anyway.” 

Hugh smiles gently and then surprises him by embracing him. As much as they make out and make love, a hug is different. 

“Can we go somewhere?” he murmurs into Hugh’s neck. “Somewhere we’d go, in the real world?” 

Hugh seems to understand what he’s not able to ask, and they find themselves in a gorgeous hotel room that Patrick would never be able to afford in real life, all white and gold and floor-to-ceiling windows. 

It’s the closest they’ve been to romantic, this whole time. They sip champagne and exchange nuzzling kisses in front of the windows. It’s an ending and a beginning, Patrick thinks. 

So he kisses Hugh like it’s a beginning. He turns away from the windows and into Hugh’s arms and kisses him with a gentleness they’ve til now both pretended didn’t exist between them. It  _ is _ a beginning, he reminds himself as they sway across the room, kissing and swaying and continually forgetting where they’re going because of the kissing. It’s a beginning because he likes Hugh, thinks he could even more than like him, now that he’s moving on from David. His love for David has been holding him back from seeing just how much he could love Hugh. 

Beginnings are always bittersweet, he tells the ache in his chest.

But in the enormous bed, after Hugh has worked him open and kissed him deeply as he pressed into Patrick, after a moment of something approaching zen in which he wants to live in the slick slide of their bodies forever, Patrick comes with a shout, and the sound of that shout is David’s name. 

Hugh is scrambling back before Patrick has even come down from his orgasm. He gasps at the sudden emptiness and reaches for Hugh, wanting to take him back in, but he sees the look on Hugh’s face and his mind catches up to the name he’s just cried out while another man was fucking him. 

“Hugh,” Patrick says, pleads. 

“What. The fuck,” Hugh hisses, and then he’s gone, vanished straight out of the hotel room and the game. 

Already knowing it’s too late, Patrick still falls forward into the space where Hugh had been, hands clutching for him. He groans and buries his face in the otherworldly-soft sheets. ( _ David would love these sheets. _ ) 

_ Fuck _ . This has been bound to happen, whatever neat compartmentalization he’s been attempting. It’s mostly shocking it’s taken this long for David to bubble through into this version of reality. He thought Hugh knew - not that that’s an excuse, but Hugh had teased him about having a Francesco, an unrequited love. Surely Hugh has someone too, out there, whom he longs for. 

He knows that even if that’s true, it’s not fair. He aches for Hugh. He knows he should have called things off, knows that however many times they said  _ it’s casual, it’s just sex, _ they’d both been too emotionally involved. 

He lays there a while longer, long enough for the sweat and cum to disappear from his skin the way it always does eventually in the game, long enough for his heart to slow. He waits, but Hugh doesn’t come back. 

  
  
  


He checks the game each night with diminishing hope. Hugh doesn’t show up, and doesn’t show up, and he keeps not showing up, and Patrick thinks, sitting again on a beach in Cephalonia, alone this time, that that’s that. He’s a little sad they’ll never get to discuss the ending of the novel. 

If nothing else, it’s a potent reminder, an omen fostered not by fate but by the inevitability of his own heart, and he decides he needs to actually  _ do something _ about getting over David. If he respects himself, and honestly if he respects David, he needs to make more of an effort. He needs to get over David, and he needs to text Rachel, and he needs to call his parents. 

Next month, he promises himself. Next month he’ll download Bumpkin or go to a mixer.

He finally goes to visit his hometown within the game. He still doesn’t know if locations are generated in the game through satellite images or Streetview data or players’ memories or some combination of all of those, but his home - his parents’ home - looks right. Except they’re not there, so it could never  _ feel _ right.

He sits in the hallway between the living room where he’d unwrapped Christmas presents and the kitchen which his dad still hopes to get certified in order to sell baked goods. He sits on the floor in that hallway, his head back against the wall, and he misses them. 

He couldn’t tell them most of the things he wants to tell them - certainly not the virtual reality sex, and maybe none of the virtual reality stuff at all - and he’s never been one to discuss his relationships with his parents but he wants to now. He wants them to know how he feels about David, like if he can tell them then he can finally let David go. He doesn’t want to only be calling them because he needs something from them, but maybe David’s right; maybe they’d just be glad that he called, and they could take it from there. He can’t truthfully say that all of his problems stem from the relationships he’s broken or lost, and he can’t truthfully say that fixing them will fix everything else. But he wants those relationships back, and maybe that’s enough. 

_ You can only try _ . 

It’s nearly ten at night when he gets out of the game and calls home, and his mom’s voice is so concerned when she answers that he starts crying before he can get out a proper greeting. 

  
  
  
  


“Do you think we can stop for pretzels at the Mennonite shop in Elm Glen and still make it back to Schitt’s Creek by six?” David asks, sliding into Patrick’s passenger seat after a visit to one of their farther-flung vendors. 

Patrick smiles at him. It gets easier every day to both love him and be okay. “Going to beat someone up in  _ Striking Vipers _ tonight?” he teases. 

“Um, no,” David huffs, buckling in. “I actually stopped playing that a bit ago. It just started to feel sleazy. Like, who even  _ are _ these people, you know? Probably a bunch of pimply kids in Nova Scotia, no offense to them, full offense to Nova Scotia. And I read some  _ very _ concerning articles about their user privacy mechanisms. Really I only read the headlines because who reads full articles these days?” 

Patrick opens his mouth and shuts it again without commenting. 

“So.” David rubs his hands on his legs. “Pretzels?” 

They’re almost outside the town boundary of Elmdale and onto the final stretch back to Schitt’s Creek when David throws out a hand with a spray of pretzel salt. “Oh! Can we stop at the library? I have to return a book. I already owe them, like, six dollars because I keep forgetting to renew it.” 

Patrick pulls over. He accepts the half-eaten pretzel David hands to him for safe-keeping and sneaks a bite as David rummages in his bag. 

He recognizes the cover instantly, the unmistakable cream and blue. 

He chokes. 

“That’s what you get for eating other people’s precious carbs,” David chides; he takes the pretzel back and pats Patrick’s back with the hand not holding  _ Captain Correlli’s Mandolin _ . “Better?” 

Patrick nods dumbly. “Um. Good book?” 

“Yeah, it was okay,” David says vaguely. “A friend recommended it. But like I said, six dollars, so. Time to give up.” 

He slips out of the car and trots over to the return bin, leaving Patrick staring at the passenger door, his mouth slightly open, feeling like his brain is imploding. 

It has to be a coincidence. Sure, Hugh had been reading the book, and Patrick had recommended it to him, but - 

There’s no way. There’s  _ no way _ . There’s no way that he stumbled into a virtual reality game which _ millions _ of people are playing worldwide and just  _ happens _ to meet someone on a beach on a Greek island and it just  _ happens  _ to be David. There’s no way, right? The odds are - he starts to calculate them and ends up with  _ really fucking impossible _ . 

David’s back, and he’s saying something and Patrick nods and starts the car and it’s lucky he knows this route so well because he’s operating in something like a fugue state. He should just  _ ask _ David, though how he would even phrase that -  _ Any chance you’ve been having sex with a stranger in virtual reality for the last month or two?  _

He drops David off at the cafe and still hasn’t said anything. Through the window he sees him slide into a booth next to Alexis, and Twyla comes to take their order. David had been playing the game in the motel’s spare room, Twyla had said, because  _ he tried playing in his room but Alexis kept interrupting him  _ \- he remembers the first night he met Hugh, the way he’d left so abruptly. What if-

He sits in his car outside his apartment for longer than is probably acceptable by Neighborhood Watch standards. He’s trying to remember if Hugh has said or done anything particularly David-esque, but he can already feel his suspicion, his wild hope, coloring his memories of their interactions. Hadn’t he himself thought about their similarities - proudly opinionated, well-traveled, arrogant and charming, carefully aloof until the second they bowled him over with wisdom and understanding and compassion? 

It’s probably a coincidence. He probably just has a type. The book - the book he can’t really explain, but maybe someone else can. 

  
  
  


“Hey Stevie,” he says as casually as he can for someone who has never before set foot in the motel lobby. 

“Good morning Patrick,” Stevie replies in the same tone, her unmoving eyebrows still somehow conveying confusion and intrigue. She marks a spot in her book with her finger. “If you’re looking to book a room, I would really recommend you just stay in your own home for the night.” 

“Ah, thanks, I’m here to ask about a book, actually.” He leans on the counter and gestures to her hardcover. “Do you recommend a lot of books to David?” 

Her eyes narrow. He’s always known she was too smart. “No,” she says slowly. “He has bizarrely specific taste, as we both know. I loaned him  _ Banshees on a Plane _ one weekend when he had a cold and his mom made him quarantine and he told me it had, and I quote,  _ too much plot _ .” 

“Right. Right. Do you know anyone  _ else _ in David’s life who might recommend books to him? Like, other friends, maybe?” 

“Friends who aren’t us?” Stevie smirks. “Patrick. David doesn’t  _ have  _ friends who aren’t us.” 

“That’s what I thought!” he says, with maybe a bit too much enthusiasm. 

“Though to be fair,” she adds, “he might just say ‘a friend recommended it’ when really it was in Oprah’s Book Club or whatever.” 

“That’s true,” Patrick chuckles. “I’ll, uh... I should probably just ask him. Thanks anyway, Stevie.” 

She flips her book back open. “The part of me that really wants to know what this is about is fighting with the part of me that knows it’s probably something boring and inane and completely irrelevant to anyone who’s not you or David.” 

He pauses at the door, tempted for a moment to tell her everything in a rush, desperate to share this. But there’s a chance it’s nothing, and he doesn’t want her looking at him with pity for the rest of forever if it’s nothing. “Honestly, Stevie,” he says finally, “it’s probably not even what I think it is. Hopefully I’ll know soon, and either I can tell you and we’ll laugh about it, or I’ll be sworn to secrecy and we can never speak about this again.” 

She shakes her head as he leaves, and he hears her mutter, “You idiots deserve each other.” 

His ears burn as he walks back to his car, but he’s grinning. He hopes she’s right. 

  
  
  
  


For a few nights, Patrick struggles to get proper sleep, beset as he is with the nagging sense of something unfinished - a question he wants answered, a story he needs the end to. He could leave it here: whether David is Hugh or not, he could leave him be. It might be selfish, to disrupt what they have now. He’d promised himself that he’d get over David, and he worries that he’s just reading into things now, imagining a serendipity that will let him keep on yearning. 

But Patrick wants to be brave. If there’s anything he’s learned from David - and from Hugh, really, which is both the same and different - it’s to be brave. And David has said that he values being given the opportunity to choose. To say no if he wants to, but to  _ choose _ . He deserves to have all the information Patrick has. 

_ You can only try and then someone else has to step up the rest of the way _ . 


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This fic has been dedicated to Cucumber Jack, who didn't make it into the story but who was with us all along. Thanks for your service to the revolution, Jack.

“Hey David,” Patrick says, one morning in late November. It’s casual, this  _ Hey David _ that could start or end everything; casual like he hasn’t spent the last three days planning this. After a lifetime of acting like someone he’s not without even realizing it, what’s one more day of pretending? “I was, uh, thinking, we should play  _ Striking Vipers _ together sometime.” 

David doesn’t look up from the tastefully seasonal plants he’s adding to the front displays. “Hmm, I don’t know, I kind of think I’m done with that depressing phase in my life?” 

“That’s fair, that’s fair,” Patrick nods, despite the acute panic. “I just thought, you could show me Japan?” 

David turns from the ladder shelves. He rolls his eyes, like Patrick had hoped he would. “I can’t just  _ show _ you Japan, Patrick. Japan is a  _ lifelong experience _ , not a - a -  [ world’s largest lobster statue  ](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_World%27s_Largest_Lobster) on the side of the highway. Even if we had a million hours it wouldn’t be enough, and we’d really need to engage a bevy of local people, because I may consider myself an amateur expert but I’ve only just scratched the surface. But it’s not like you can take a  _ tour _ or hire a  _ guide  _ in the game...though that is an intriguing business proposition,” he says, thumbing one of his rings in thought. 

Patrick can’t help grinning at him. He can already see the itinerary and must-see sites and key aesthetic experiences accumulating in David’s head. “Hey, intriguing business propositions are supposed to be  _ my _ area.” 

“Oh, I’m sure someone’s already monetized it. Everyone’s an entrepreneur these days,” David muses, like he’s been in small business for decades instead of six months. He’s got his phone out, his nose nearly pressed to the screen. “Still, just in case...” 

“So, uh, are we on for tonight?” Patrick asks. He moves behind the counter because he can’t stop from flexing and tensing his hands in hopeful anticipation. 

“Hmm?” 

“Will you show me Japan tonight?” 

David draws his phone to his chest, mouth scrunched, considering Patrick. “You don’t have to do that,” he says softly. “I’m sure you’ve got ... better things, or - or people you-” 

“No, I’d like to,” Patrick says to interrupt him, because  _ you keep assuming you aren’t my priority  _ seems a bit too strong. “Just - send me the name of your favorite place in Japan and I’ll make an in-game link and email it to you-” 

“This is sounding very complicated,” David protests. 

“David,” he says. He reaches out, and though he catches himself in time and retracts his hand before he touches David’s, they both see it happen; he watches David watch his hand fall to the counter. “I’d really like to go to Japan with you. If you don’t want to-” 

“Mm, no, didn’t say that,” David says. He’s smiling, the smile all tucked up between teeth but his eyes irrepressibly bright. “Just wanted to register my complaint that it sounds complicated.” 

“Right, right. Well, your distress is noted.” If Patrick leans forward onto his palms, the distance between them over the counter seeming insignificant, well - it’s just David’s natural gravity. 

“Didn’t say  _ distress _ either,” but a customer has come in and David’s already turning to help them, tugging his sweater down, straightening edges that were already perfect. 

Patrick wants to kiss him right there, in their store, customers be damned. 

A moment later, his phone buzzes with a text - the name of a garden in Tokyo. He glances up, but David is studiously engaged with explaining Brenda’s full range of skincare products. 

Patrick thinks David seems a bit more smiley than normal, but hey, he’s always had strong feelings about body milk. 

  
  
  
  
Patrick arrives at the gardens fifteen minutes early, even though he expects David to be at least half an hour late. So he’s had plenty of time to think his avatar into and out of a dark blue suit jacket at least seven times so far. He decides against it in the end, because if David  _ isn’t _ Hugh, it’ll be hard to explain why he dressed up for a casual hang between friends slash coworkers. It’s for the same reason that he opts not to imagine a mandolin into his arms; too on-the-nose, and  _ definitely _ too hard to explain if he’s somehow got it wrong. He’s left himself looking like the Carlo avatar David has known in here. It will, he hopes, make things instantly clear, one way or another. 

He keeps doing that, as he stands just under the arching outer branches of an ethereally lacy, deep red tree: keeps doing the ‘if David is/isn’t Hugh’ calculations. He’s just about worked himself up to backing out of this - because really, there are too many variables, he should’ve prepared more, somehow - when David appears on the other side of the path. 

He knows instantly. It’s like each iteration of Hugh had some small aspect of David and now, seeing the avatar David chooses to look most like himself, he can see the ways those iterations fit together. It’s still not fully  _ David _ , at least not the way he sees David, but it’s - it’s undeniably him, and Hugh, all at once. 

He checks the username, just to be sure, and it gives him the confirmation he no longer needs. He wonders if he’s always known; if some part of him had recognized David, even when he’d been Hugh. 

“Patrick?” David calls, and he stoops a little to look for Patrick amidst the branches. 

Patrick lets out a giddy exhale, finding his eyes suddenly wet and the dinner jacket back on his avatar’s form. Every fear he’s had about how this could play out simply fades away. He feels  _ right _ . 

“In here,” he calls back. 

David brushes aside some branches, emerging from between the leaves like a Disney prince. “Hi,” he smiles, but as he straightens to stand in their little private space under the branches, he seems to register the bits of Patrick that he’s only known as- “Carlo?!”

“Hi, David,” Patrick says. The fallen leaves are starting to float off the ground - he’s not even trying to do that but apparently he can, with the force of his emotion, with the way everything in him is surging towards David. 

“Where’s Patrick?” David demands, swatting at one of the swirling, romantic leaves. 

Patrick frowns. “I-” 

“Did you hack him?” 

This is  _ not _ a scenario Patrick had run in his mental simulations of this conversation. “Did I -  _ what _ ?” 

“I was supposed to meet Patrick here, so either you hacked him, Carlo, or he’s  _ in on this _ , which seems out of character for him, so  _ you tell me _ what I’m supposed to believe!” 

Patrick fights back a laugh. “David,  _ I’m _ Carlo.” 

David looks at him like he has three heads. “Got that, thanks.” 

“No, I - I’m  _ Patrick. _ ” 

This draws David up short. He stops craning his neck for a sight of a different Patrick somewhere and freezes, one hand clutching a branch that keeps brushing his face. 

“You’re-” 

“I’m Patrick. And Carlo,” Patrick adds, to clarify, because he’s had some time to adjust to the idea of Hugh and David being one, but it’s new to David. 

“You’re - you-” David looks like he’s going to faint. “You’re - it’s been you the whole time,” he whispers, and it’s not a question; he says it like he finally understands, like he’s doing the same quick mental backtracking Patrick had done, searching for all the clues he’d missed. 

“I didn’t know, David, I didn’t know until recently,” he admits gleefully. He rocks forward on his toes; he wants to reach for David, but he’s had this stupid, pathetic, desperate, romantic notion that the next time he kisses David, he wants it to be  _ real _ . “I didn’t know-” 

“Holy  _ fuck _ ,” David swears.

And then he vanishes. 

Maybe with time Patrick will find it funny that he keeps making the men he likes disappear like this, but it’s getting really old, to be fucking honest. 

He stares, open-mouthed, at the space David has vacated, the gently resettling branches the only sign he’d been there at all. 

Then he’s mentally scrabbling for the game’s exit, willing himself out, tearing the console off his temple before he even has his eyes fully open. 

“Shit shit shit,” he mutters, scrambling for his phone. Okay, maybe he shouldn’t have ambushed David with this information. He’d been too eager, he dove too quick into it, he should’ve found a way to ease David in.  _ Shit _ . He’d hoped that setting the meeting in Japan would make things easier on David, but what if he’s permanently tainted David’s favorite place? He’d meant it as a big gesture, the kind out of the romantic comedies David loves. He should’ve known - he shouldn’t have - what if -

He dials Alexis, because he needs someone to check on David. He wants to run through contingency plans for what he’ll do if David’s no longer comfortable working together, but there will be time to catastrophize later. Alexis isn’t answering, which hopefully doesn’t mean she’s having to talk David down from a panic attack. He hits redial. Someone’s knocking on his door, which he does  _ not _ have time for, unless it’s Stevie here for a vengeful killing which he’d almost welcome at this point. 

It’s not Stevie. 

“David,” he gasps, canceling the call, flinging his phone somewhere across the apartment. 

David slumps against the door frame, panting, perfect hairline starting to curl with sweat. “You-” he gasps, pointing at Patrick.

“Did you  _ run _ here?” Patrick asks, disbelieving. 

“Yes!” David waves his hands at Patrick’s stunned expression. “I mean, I ran here from the - from the car, which is parked right outside your building, but I had to fight Alexis for the keys and it was a  _ very _ stressful drive and there are, like, three sets of stairs to get up here and I took them  _ two at a time _ , Patrick,  _ fuck _ , my hamstrings might be permanently broken-” 

Patrick gently takes his elbows, ready to guide him into the apartment for water and rest and frozen peas for his hamstrings but David uses the contact, slides his hands up Patrick’s arms and grips his shoulders tightly and kisses him. 

Patrick short-circuits. Truly, for a moment, he whites out. And the sudden press of David’s body should send Patrick stumbling backwards but he’s apparently been preparing for this moment, as much as he never thought it would come, because as he comes down from an out-of-body moment he sways into David, his arms curling around David’s shoulders, his lips parting for a gasp before the shock waves of  _ finally finally finally _ give way to need. He spreads a hand over the taut length of the back of David’s neck and angles himself in as much as possible, a foot between David’s feet, a leg between his knees; how can there be too much too soon, for them, when this is both the first time David’s tongue is tracing his and also the hundredth? 

David presses three firm kisses to Patrick’s silently pleading mouth before sliding his lips over Patrick’s cheek. The sensation, so innocent, engulfs Patrick in flames. 

The tip of David’s tongue curls in the tender shell of Patrick’s ear. “ _ Carlo _ ,” David whispers. 

Patrick shivers at the way the  _ r  _ rolls through him but he says, pathetically, without time to think about it, “I want to be Patrick.” 

He hears David’s shattered exhale, faint and private against his neck, and then he’s pulling back, looking at Patrick properly for the first time. Patrick expects his gaze to be different from what he’s seen at the store, at the cafe, in his car, but it’s the same; has it always been this way? 

David hums and cradles his face. “You are,” he whispers, and he presses a kiss to the bone at the corner of Patrick’s eye, lips brushing lashes. “You  _ are _ ,” he repeats, with a kiss above one eyebrow. “Patrick.” A kiss to his jaw. “ _ Patrick _ .” 

Patrick, eyes closed, lets him dust his face in kisses until he’s envious of every inch of his own skin for its contact with David’s mouth, until he can’t stand it anymore and has to kiss David again. He thinks David breathes his name even then, against his lips, into his mouth. 

Somehow they close the apartment door without separating, and though the bed feels miles away they make it there. It’s not Tokyo or the Serengeti or a beach in Guyana and it doesn’t have to be, god, he wonders if he’ll ever be able to sleep in this bed again, even if they stop now, even if nothing more than kissing happens, even if he only has this image, of David splayed fully-clothed on top of his blankets. He’d thought the edge had been taken off this crush from time and disappointment and self-moderation but he’s as horny and desperate and parched for David as he’d found himself that first night after a fated appointment at Ray’s. 

“Is this okay?” David asks, eyes bright and earnest, and he’s asked Patrick that a million times in a million contexts but never like this. 

“Yes, more than,” he promises. 

“Not too fast?” 

_ Too slow _ , he almost says, but he cannot find it in himself to be ungrateful when they are  _ here _ . He’s gotten to fall in love with David twice, in a way; how could he begrudge the universe that gift? “No, not too fast.” 

“I’m gonna,” David grunts, and he’s wriggling out of his joggers, his sweater still on, like he can’t bear to do things in order; the cuffs at the ankles get caught on his shoes, and he drapes inelegantly forward over his bare legs to try to untangle himself. 

Patrick laughs and starts on his own buttons. David looks so  _ different _ from Hugh, and even from the avatar he’d used in the game tonight. He wonders if it’s a reflection of what David thinks he looks like or of what he  _ wants _ to look like. Either way, Patrick thinks as he kicks his clothes aside and crawls up beside David, both now down to their underwear, he’s so, so determined to spend as long as he can convincing David that the real thing is so much better, so much  _ more _ . 

“You’re always laughing at me,” David grumbles, and his next kiss has a bite, a tease, and Patrick wants to whimper, not from the sensation but from the  _ relief _ , the disbelief. 

“You’re very funny,” he murmurs, tangling himself as tightly as he can around David. 

David’s foot slides down his calf and his hips jerk forward. He can’t believe - he couldn’t have anticipated - he  _ could have _ , given the evidence, but - David is all limbs and body hair that sets Patrick’s nerve endings alight, reminders pressed to his skin that this is  _ David _ , and Patrick finally understands the titular scene of  _ Call Me By Your Name _ . He wants to be in and of David, he wants the distance between them to no longer exist. He wants to be one, not even in a sexual sense, though yes, that too, but in a deeper way, a way he doesn’t fully understand. 

“David,” he pants, in lieu of saying any of these embarrassing thoughts, “I want-” 

“Yes, anything,” David whispers, and Patrick remembers saying that to Hugh once, or maybe a hundred times. But David doesn’t give him a chance to specify, holding Patrick’s face in his broad palms, kissing him with something akin to the fire Patrick feels. 

Patrick laughs against David’s mouth, because he’s trying to be brave but he’s  _ kissing David,  _ which is the bravest, best thing he’s ever done. “David,” he manages, pushing at David’s shoulders slightly. David looks nervous, so he goes on quickly. “I want to properly date you. In  _ this _ reality.” 

“Oh.” A radiant smile blooms on David’s face before he can tamp it down. “Okay.” 

_ Oh, okay _ \- like it’s easy. Like it’s a foregone conclusion. Maybe it is, or has been for some time. There’s still a conversation, or six, to be had, but - Patrick knows that David wouldn’t enter into this lightly, not with a friendship and a store at risk. If he says  _ oh, okay _ like it’s easy, maybe it is. 

David squeezes him tighter, kisses him harder, hot and desperate and determined, and somehow he’s on his back, David above him, their cocks pressed together through the briefs they’re still wearing, why are they still wearing clothes?! “David, god, fuck me, please, fuck me, David,” he pleads, not knowing until he says it how it might absolutely  _ break  _ him if that doesn’t happen. 

“Mhm, mhm, who needs foreplay anyway?” David teases, but he looks so  _ pleased _ . 

“If you don’t fore _ play _ with my ass soon I might have to take care of myself.” 

“Oh my god,” David groans, hiding his face against Patrick’s waistband, though Patrick suspects it’s an excuse to nuzzle his hip. “I hate that I’m attracted to you.” 

“No you don’t,” Patrick says, with a surety that’s new, that’s brilliantly intoxicating in its own way. 

David looks up at him, a wonderfully bewildering tableau of soft eyes and shy smile and fingers ghosting over Patrick’s tented briefs. “No, I don’t,” he whispers. 

It’s messier than in the game. Coordination is more difficult, Patrick’s body feels ungainly as David props his hips up with a pillow, and when David accidentally knees him in the thigh as he scrabbles in the nightstand drawer for supplies, the pain lingers. But the erotic touches are also heightened. At one point David runs his fingertips down Patrick’s side and Patrick arches helplessly off the bed, a gaspy moan punched from his chest by the force of his desire. 

“There you go,” David whispers, when he finally presses a lubed finger into Patrick. Patrick could laugh: David is  _ soothing him _ while fucking him. He’s imagined wild, passionate, fevered sex with David a million times but tender sex is so much better and so much worse. He feels what he thought was missing with Hugh. For all that their sex had been amazing, with David - with the history and affection and complexity of knowing each other - it’s an act of worship unto itself. Patrick can feel each stroke reverberate up to his chest, each ghosting of David’s lips over his leaking cock sending shuddering ripples through Patrick’s lungs. It feels a lot like love, and the thought sends a fresh wave of fire through him, his hips bucking against David’s hand. 

By the time he’s ready for David, he’s come back into himself a bit more, the intensity of the sensations grounding him in the moment. It allows him to focus enough on what’s actually happening, to help David get the condom on and to comb back his hair as he gives Patrick’s chest a reassuring kiss. He can’t wait to have a long, languorous night (or tomorrow morning, because who needs a job and an income when you have  _ this _ ) to give David the unravelling attention he deserves. 

David presses into him and they both grunt. Patrick wriggles his shoulders further into the bed and plants his feet next to David’s hips to give himself leverage; the shift draws David fully in so that their bodies are flush. Patrick can feel the burning of David’s skin from his groin all the way to his tip, buried deep within him. He’s not sure that’s possible, but he  _ feels it _ . 

After a few exploratory thrusts, David lowers himself so they’re chest to chest, his arms bracketing Patrick’s head. They find each other’s mouths again so that they are as joined as they can be. Patrick wants to give David a kiss for every time he’s felt stronger, better, bolder because of David; there’s not enough time in the world. 

With the roll of David’s hips and the little thrusts Patrick is making - desperate for more of the pressure inside him, needing something against his cock - it becomes impossible to keep up their kisses, and David drops his head to the side of Patrick’s neck, panting into the private humidity there. 

“Sometimes, after we had sex in the game,” David whispers, and Patrick moans, scrabbling for David’s shoulderblades; the reminder that they’ve done this a few dozen times before, not knowing, and it’s led them to this, could undo him. “I’d come to in the spare room at the motel and I’d -” He snorts against Patrick’s skin. “There’s a mirror on the ceiling, and sometimes I’d jerk off, and I’d think about Carlo but I’d close my eyes and imagine it was you, your hand on me, and I imagined I could see you in the mirror, your gorgeous broad back, your thighs taut with tension, your ass clenching as you-” He gasps and breaks off, demonstrating, fucking into Patrick harder. 

Patrick can picture it, wants it, wants this too, to see them as he feels them now. He slides his hands to David’s ass and feels it tense with each stroke. He wants to know the way each of David’s muscles flex and tighten and stretch in sex. He wants to feel the way he goes slack with sleep. He wants to knead out his knots and kiss the skin that’s exposed when he stands to stretch after a long car ride. He wants to have sex with David on every inch of this apartment and then he wants to lay there, naked, needing nothing but to be touching David, to exist with him. 

David props himself back up and starts to stroke Patrick with his hand, a little uncoordinated as he continues to thrust. “I’m sorry, I wanted this to last longer-” 

“This is perfect,” he says, and means it. 

David hums. “I’m so glad it was you,” he whispers, and Patrick comes. As he does, it’s David he sees and David’s name he says, and for the first time, all of that is okay. Or maybe it’s been okay all along. Maybe  _ Patrick _ has been okay all along.

After an endless, still moment when they lay pressed together, chests heaving, David rolls to the side and pads away, dropping the used condom in the bathroom trash. When he returns with a couple of wet cloths, Patrick smiles, pillowing an arm under his head. 

“We never had to do this, before,” he comments, accepting the rag and cleaning his stomach. “Any of the after stuff. It all just...vanished, in the game.” 

“Mm, if only,” David sighs, gingerly taking the used cloth back and looking around for the laundry basket. 

“I don’t mind it.” Patrick drinks in the long lines of David’s body, the little trembles in his worn-out thighs as he crosses the room. “If there’s clean-up, it means it’s real.” 

David doesn’t answer, but when he comes back to the bed he climbs under the top sheet and snuggles into Patrick’s side. He slides a hand over Patrick’s ribs and waist and leans in to mouth at Patrick’s arm, not quite kissing it. It’s lips and teeth and tongue and stubble and it makes him think that maybe sex isn’t just about orgasm because he wants these sensations, too, forever. 

David squeezes Patrick’s far hip and says against his elbow, “I liked you first.” 

Patrick laughs; if David wants to make this a competition, he’s happy to engage. “What?” 

“I liked you before I ever liked Carlo.” 

Patrick blinks. “Oh.” He’s been kind of gathering, from things David has said tonight, that the crush and attraction have been mutual for quite some time, but to hear him say it, to  _ know _ \- 

David lifts Patrick’s arm and wiggles under it so that his head is cradled between Patrick’s chest and bicep. His stubble brushes one of Patrick’s nipples as he moves and  _ oh _ now he’s missing the abbreviated refractory periods of the game, too. “I’m a little jealous of Hugh, honestly,” David says conversationally. “For all the time he had with you and having firsts with you...”

“David,” Patrick chuckles, disbelieving, “you know that Hugh was...you, right?” 

“Of  _ course _ I  _ know _ that,” David huffs. He wriggles as if to get closer, which isn’t possible, and Patrick’s comforted in knowing that David feels that same impulse. “But I didn’t know that Carlo was  _ you _ . It’s  _ different _ .” 

The sting of thinking he’d messed up when David had vanished from the game is softened by how things have turned out, but Patrick still winces a little. “For what it’s worth,” he says gently, “I told you as soon as I knew it was you. Or,  _ thought  _ it was you, I didn’t - I didn’t know for sure, until... It was important to me that you know.” 

“Thank you.” David pats his chest, grinning at him. “Don’t worry, I feel  _ thoroughly  _ respected.” 

“Well, you know. As much as I liked having sex with you, I like respecting you even more.” 

He means it as a joke, kind of, a play off of the thinly veiled innuendo David had made, but it comes out with the sincerity he’s feeling, and David clears his throat and stretches up to press a kiss to Patrick’s cheek. 

“And hey,” Patrick adds gently, twining his fingers with David’s on his stomach, “down the line, when you inevitably try to self-sabotage by making me date other guys, I can remind you that I’ve already been with someone else.” 

“Oh my god, first,  _ rude _ , that is a flagrant aspersion on my upstanding character, to presume that I would - and that’s  _ not _ how it works, you’ve  _ only _ been with me, Hugh and I are the same person!” 

“You can’t have it both ways, David.” 

David groans and flops away, rolling onto away from Patrick. Patrick laughs and scooches after him, curling around his back. He wonders if this will become _ David’s side  _ of the bed. 

“Also,” he says into David’s ear, and David immediately melts into him, “we’re going to need to come up with an explanation of how we got together.” 

“Hmm?”

“Unless you want to tell Roland about all the virtual reality sex we were having-”

“We’re telling Roland about us?” David asks, sounding slightly strangled. Patrick tightens his arms. 

“Well, we don’t have to tell anyone yet, but I was hoping, eventually-” 

David twists in his embrace so he’s facing Patrick. He’s got that expression where he knows he’s been caught out in a smile. “I can workshop an origin story for us,” he blurts out. “I might have to watch some rom coms for inspiration-” 

“Maybe a moodboard?” Patrick suggests. 

“We definitely deserve a moodboard.” 

They settle in like that, nose to nose. Patrick can feel the exhaustion of the day, the reveal, the fear, the relief, the sex, the elation that followed, all gathering weight in his bones and behind his eyes. They should shower and eat something; soon, he thinks, pulling the edge of the sheets up over them both. 

“I’m going to have to finish that novel now, aren’t I?” David mumbles sleepily against Patrick’s jaw. 

“You can borrow my copy,” Patrick assures him. “It has a happy ending, I promise.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all an infinite amount for your kind support. It has meant so so much. This fic and I had a real challenging relationship throughout my wrangling of it and getting so much love on it has been immensely gratifying. (Like, yes, do I wish I could do a thing just for myself and not care about the feedback? Sure. Do I know that I'm not that evolved? Also yes.) You've recognized the things I was worried were too subtle, you've appreciated things I didn't know would get that kind of response, you've seen more in the story than I even knew was there myself. Y'all are a blessing. Hope you stay safe and healthy. 
> 
> If you're American, please vote. It's just a drop in the bucket of what we need to be doing but it's so vital! 
> 
> And last but not least thank you again to my virtuoso beta Sarah. You're a real one. As opposed to a virtual reality one? Idk. You're amazing.


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